Category Archives: Marketing

All the blogs under this category discuss general marketing. Whether it be cold calls, messaging or targeted campaigns.

How to create a successful campaign plan?

Trial and error is a great tool for learning anything and that goes for your marketing too. We all spend a lot of time looking for lead generation tools that work for our business and when we find one, we hold on to it. At the same time, if we try something and it does not work, we strike it off our list forever. I think that it’s a good way to ensure you are spending your budget wisely and getting results.

So far so good but let me ask you two further questions:

How much of your knowledge of success is based on your preference and comfort zone rather than on testing and measuring?
When was the last time you reviewed your tried and tested lead generation methods?

These are really important questions to consider because,

You should base your lead generation campaigns on your target market’s preference and comfort zone rather than your own
New lead generation tools are developed all the time and trends and approaches are developed so reviewing your approach regularly is important

The beginning of the year is often when companies plan their marketing, so this month I thought I would share my approach to campaign planning whilst taking into account the above considerations:

Break your marketing into individual campaigns first and plan each one separately

Don’t go in all directions in one go; it’s much better to have two successful campaigns than five messy ones.

Set your new business targets by working out the following parameters of the sale:

Your average sale
Your conversion rate
Number of leads required
Make sure your goals are SMART

Get a better understanding of who you are targeting. Consider things like:

Who is your ideal company and why?
What is the specific problem that you can solve?
Who do you want to speak to?
Where are they likely to go for information?
What questions are they going to ask?
What are your challenges in winning companies in this market?

Learn from your competition. Do some research to find out:

Who are your main competitors in this market?
What are they doing to attract new business?
Can you offer something different?

Once you are clear on the above, look at tools and tactics:

What worked for you in the past?
What can you do successfully using your own resources?
Are there any new tools you could use?
What is worth outsourcing?

There are many more things you can do but the above considerations are key to setting you off in the right direction. Many companies are set up to do their own planning successfully but if you lack resources or would like another pair of eyes and ears on the case, give us a call to discuss further. Find out more about our lead generation plans here.

Why you should be clear on your target markets for 2020

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Before you do any marketing, it is vital you know your target markets, and when I say know them, I mean really know them, in detail.

Their age, gender, education, where they live, where they work, what they do, what they like and dislike, household size, income, what media they read, listen to etc

Why is this so vital? Well when you put a marketing plan together, you need to know who you are speaking to, how to get their interest and engage them and of course how to reach them. No matter how creative your campaigns, or how much money you spend, if you are speaking to the wrong people there is no point and a waste of your time and money.

For example – would you place an advert for a mobility scooter in a magazine for Teenage girls! No, of course not, but you would promote the latest lip plumping lip gloss in one!

Once you have identified your market you are also able to craft messages that appeal specifically to different audiences within them. Even when you are selling fundamentally the same service or product you will still need to word things differently depending on your target audience. For example, a Financial Advisor would need to tailor his message to an older person looking for financial advice for retirement differently than to a young couple looking to buy their first home.

That’s the basics of it, and with digital technology in 2020 offering more sophisticated options to promote your business than ever before, you really do need to be crystal clear on your target markets to get the best and most cost effective results.

These days technology has made it much easier, not only to find out about your audience in the first place put also to reach them. Campaigns can now be aimed at very specific and niche audiences. To take advantage of this though you have to start with knowing as much as possible about the people you want to reach.

So, if you want to get the best results as cost effectively as possible you need to get total clarity on who your potential clients are. A great place to start would be at our target market planning workshop taking place on January 31^st. Not only will this help identify your audience but show you the best way to approach them.

Join me on this workshop to learn about my unique and proven approach, to target market definition, and using it to identify and create your target market(s) in detail.

We will also look at developing new markets to come up with a campaign plan and approach for your company so you can apply it straight away.

If you would like to discuss target markets or planning a marketing campaign for 2020 please don’t hesitate to get in touch. yafit@yourbizdevteam.co.uk

4 top SME marketing tools

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There are several Marketing strategies available to SME’s, both online and offline, but it is important to decide which ones are best for your business. To do this you need to think carefully about who you are targeting. This in turn will determine what tools and tactics you should use.

In this article we looked at some digital marketing options. Of course, you don’t need to consider them all at once, but it is a good idea to have several marketing activities on the go to ensure a steady stream of leads.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO is the process of optimizing your website to make it easier for search engines to crawl or “read.” By making small changes to your site and developing content that focuses on relevant keywords, you can work to rank higher on the search engine results page and therefore increase opportunities to drive new traffic to your site.

Improving your SEO will help improve your visibility online by ensuring that new buyers can find you on search engines like Google.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is the process of creating and publishing quality content that is relevant to your target audience and provides value to them. It is important to know your audiences, challenges, needs and desires to develop good content marketing.

Content marketing focuses on the long-term, it helps build trust with your audience, promote a positive and foster powerful relationships with your leads and customers.

PPC Advertising/Facebook Advertising

PPC, or pay-per-click works just like it sounds, it is an online advertising model where you pay each time a consumer clicks on your ad content. Google AdWords is the main search engine for this as that is where most of your potential clients will be searching. PPC advertising works as a great supplement to your organic search efforts, allowing you to drive relevant traffic to your site immediately.

Facebook ads are a very effective and inexpensive way to advertise your products to nearly any niche audience, no matter what business you are in. Facebook allows you to target your audience very specifically.

E-mail marketing

Email marketing is a great way to stay top of mind within your customer base and send triggered communications to relevant customer segments.

Most consumers are not going to buy from you on their first visit to your website. So, it’s important to find ways to keep in touch with these potential clients. Once you have captured your visitors’ contact information, you can nurture these leads with e-mail marketing. E-mail marketing is also essential for keeping in touch with existing clients.

webinar invitation, or a special promotion.

I hope you found this useful though one of the main problems we come across when it comes to SME’s is the fact that they don’t do enough testing and measuring and spend their marketing budget looking for a magic bullet. If this resonates with you, we would like to invite you to attend our taster session for our new marketing workshops designed for SMEs. You can find more details and register here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/understand-improve-your-marketing-tickets-77266354747

5 top SME’s Off-line Marketing Strategies

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Earlier this month, we looked at digital marketing strategies for SME’s. This blog details five additional marketing offline tools. As before you need to consider what’s best for your business and think carefully about your target audience before deciding what may work best for you. Consider the following:

who is your ideal customer?
How old are they?
Where do they live?
How they would look for your product/service?

Direct Mail

Direct mail marketing can still play an important role in your marketing strategy as online However you can’t just spam people and expect a return on your investment. Just like you need to compel people to click your blog post headline, you need to compel mail recipients to open your letters. Be creative with what you send, make it standout. A coloured handwritten envelope for example is more likely to be opened than a standard typed envelope.

Telemarketing

Integrating telemarketing into the marketing mix especially in B2B marketing can be a highly effective means for generating leads and increasing sales. By integrating telemarketing before, during or after a direct or e-mail campaign, or digital project, you stand a better chance of creating a better impression, developing longer-lasting relations and gaining invaluable sales opportunities.

Business Networking

Join a local business group. This is a great way develop relationships with like-minded business people. You can talk over ideas/issues, share referrals, find talent, and identify new opportunities and form strategic partnerships.

Referral Incentives

Referrals are one of the best ways to find new customers. Offer incentives to existing customers and staff to encourage them to get referrals for you. It doesn’t necessarily have to be monetary, get creative!

Distribute Printed Materials

Physical advertising can still be an excellent way to promote your businesses. Flyers and leaflets are a lot harder to ignore than banners and ads on the computer. Also consider including discounts or offers on them to encourage people to try you out. It’s a great way to encourage a customer to make that first purchase from you.

If you want help implementing some marketing strategies to increase leads in your business, Your Business Development Team can help. In particular, this month, we would like to invite you to attend our taster session for our new marketing workshops designed for SMEs. You can find more details and register here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/understand-improve-your-marketing-tickets-77266354747

What does a healthy sales pipeline look like?

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According to research by Vantage Point, 60% of sales managers say that their company does a poor job of managing their sales pipeline, how do you rate yours?

A sales pipeline is a visual snapshot of where prospects are in the sales process. Sales pipelines show you how many deals salespeople are expected to close in a given week, month or year and how close you are to reaching targets.

If you have a pipeline worth £100,000 in contract value and your conversion rate, from lead to sale, is 10%, then you can expect to close £10,000 worth of new business.

If your sales target is £20,000, then you will need to convert twice as many leads.

This is where pipeline analysis comes in. If you can identify improvements within your pipeline that will help you move more prospects from one stage to another, then you’re going to be more successful in your business.

For B2B sales in particular, having a healthy sales pipeline allows you to:

Improve your sales process
Forecast future business results
Analyse different sales strategies for your business,
Review your progress for the current financial year
Know how far you are from your targets.

A sales pipeline plays a key role both in closing more sales deals and indicating the overall health and future direction of your company. Here are a few tips to manage your sales pipeline.

Follow up, follow up, follow up.

Buyers today have more choice than ever before and with it, they need more help to make the right decision and choose your product or service. The best sales people will make sure they keep following up with leads and keep following up.

Focus on the best leads

Concentrate your efforts on the best, most sales-ready, high value leads.

To help, you could sort your sales prospects from high to low, instead of by date so you can instantly see which leads are most valuable. Also, if you view your sales activities for each lead, you can identify which prospects are the most engaged.

Let go of the dead leads

It is important to know when to let go of a lead. A lead is dead when they clearly tell you they’re not interested. If you can’t contact them, or you’ve spoken to them repeatedly but have not been able to move them forward.

Recognise these dead leads quickly so you can move on.

Regularly monitor your pipelineYour sales pipeline is changing all the time so you need to monitor the key sales metrics. This includes things like:

The number of deals in your pipeline
The average size of the deals in your pipeline
The average percentage of deals that you win (close ratio)
The average lifetime of a deal before it’s closed (sales velocity)

These metrics give you an ‘at a glance’ view of the health of your sales pipeline and your business.

Review pipeline processes

The best sales organizations regularly review their sales pipeline and techniques to make sure things are optimized to ensure maximum efficiency and success.

When it comes to the sales process, each stage can be looked at and adapted/improved over time. This can be done one bit at a time!

Keep your pipeline updated

Don’t let your sales pipeline can get messy and confusing.

It is important to keep details up to date on every single lead by adding regular notes and information for each stage of the sales process. This does mean more admin time, but if you use this time to remove dead leads or update outdated contact information, then it’s time well spent.

Above are just a few good practices for managing your sales pipeline, there are more!

If you would like to discuss ways of improving yours Your Business Development Team would be happy to have a chat and see if we can help.

And please share this article if you’ve found it useful.

How do you know which half of your marketing is working?

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I assume many of you have heard this before: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half,” John Wanamaker (1838-1922).

Although this is an old quote, it is still very relevant and represents a source of great frustration for many companies. Marketing often seems like an endless pit which you must continue to spend on, regardless of the results you might get from it. Indeed, many companies I meet want us to provide guarantees that we can deliver results. To the marketeers and sales people that might sound problematic, however, not to an engineer who might spend 80% of their time ensuring processes deliver expected results.

This frustration leads many companies to decide not to spend any money on marketing and rely completely on existing clients and referrals. I think this is a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. The good news is that there are many things you can do to measure your marketing results. Here are a few examples:

Use a CRM system which has an effective dashboard, providing you with an overview of your pipelines and sales opportunities. Make sure that you are including an accurate picture across your sales process, for example new leads, prospects and opportunities. This means that you will be able see an accurate picture of your sales funnel.
Use Google Analytics regularly to evaluate your website performance. Although it takes time to get your head around it, you can find a wealth of information from traffic fluctuation, website usage and sources. If you don’t have the time to do this yourself, ask your marketing company to help or get training.
Ask for reports on any marketing activity you outsource and set up reports for any activities you carry out in-house. From Excel sheets to sophisticated tools such as Keyhole or Hootsuite, find the tool that works for you and use it.

This is all very well and might help with the initial discussion, but today, statistics and numbers are relatively easy to get hold of. The real question is what it means and whether it’s any use to your business. Let’s say that you have had 500 more people land on your site through Social Media in quarter two; does this mean you are going to hit your sales target this quarter? Of course, the answer is, not necessarily, which brings us back to square one…

What can you do then to understand if your marketing is working?

Here is what I recommend:

Have a plan and a strategy that you update regularly
Get close with your marketing and understand how it works and what results it brings
Ask the right questions about your results
Be patient and realistic about time scales
When in doubt, bring in an expert

Hope this is helpful. As always, if you are looking to discuss your options or just for some advice do get in touch.

What is your favourite B2B marketing strategy?

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This week I have discovered that there is definitely something about the North Sea air that really clears your thoughts. I assume it’s the cold wind that hangs around even on a lovely sunny day. I am sat writing this during our summer holiday to the Scottish Island of Islay, a very peaceful and beautiful place indeed. We have just had a picnic and as you can see from the picture, I am ready for the Scottish summer. This means that my family can run around and enjoy the rock pools whilst I stay warm enough.

This brings me to the point of the Blog today which is all about diversifying and working with the conditions you are faced with. We all have a favourite marketing strategy which we tend to believe works for us. For some people it’s e-mail marketing, for others it’s Blogging and for quite a number of SME owners it’s repeat business and referrals. Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with this. If you have been in business for sometime you must be doing something right.

Having said that, I believe you need to consider two important elements besides whatever it is that you think is working for you:

Market circumstances do change and being able to foresee this in advance can help you prepare and diversify to ensure you are ready for the new situation.
Measuring your results is very important as there is often a big difference between what you think a tactic is generating and what you actually get.

Just in case you haven’t considered the above before, here are a few things you can do going forward:

Changes to the market: None of us have a crystal ball but we can still react to change and create a plan B using a variety of tools such as:

Developing possible scenarios and analysing how they might affect both growth and business retention
Identifying some low-hanging fruit which are relatively straight forward opportunities you can capitalise on
Considering new products or services
Considering new markets to tap into
Increasing your reach in your existing market

Measuring your results: This is never an exact science but its is important nonetheless. Here are a few things you might want to consider:

Get to know how to use Google Analytics better
Learn how to use digital analytic tools for your Social Media activity
Make sure you and your team are using a CRM system to record any sales activity
Run some surveys with existing clients
Ensure you always ask new people where they heard of you

These are very broad ideas and I am sure that you and your team can come out with much more specific strategies. When you have, we will be very happy to support you in taking your new ideas to market. Click here to get in touch.

How long does your summer holiday really lasts?

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Research into wellbeing points out that levels of burnout are increasing, work-life balance is getting worse and many of us experience stress like never before. If you look at it in this light, having some time off in the summer seems like a really good idea.

Most people must agree, which is why July and particularly August tends to be a quieter time at work. So far so good but the problem is that many take this to mean that they can have a break from marketing too. Go off line for a bit and save some money on on-going campaigns. Good for them. There is nothing wrong with some cost and time saving exercises, no one is listening anyway, right?

After all this build-up I am sure that you understand that I don’t quite agree. Before I am accused of being a sad person and a party pooper, let me explain why: I am all for going on holiday, in fact some people might tell you that I have more holidays than most. But that does not mean I stop looking for new business and working through my marketing plan. Here are a few reasons why:

Because of the level of exposure to content and easy access to work stuff, most people don’t switch off. Even if they don’t read work e-mails on their holiday, they will be thinking about the problems they need to solve when they get back in the office. Your Blog might just get in front of them at the right time.
I have said this before about December but it’s also true about August: people don’t take the entire summer off, unless they are teachers, but when they are in the office they have less meetings so they are more available to take your calls. You never know, you might just be able to get hold of that prospect you have been chasing for months.
Most importantly, a new sale does not start with the crunch, it starts with a load of other work designed to identify interest. This takes time and you always have to go through it first, unless you just want to sit tight and wait for sales to come to you that is. So if you stop all of the interest creation and new business activity you may well find that you don’t write any new business until January 2020. Can you afford to do this?

So, by all means, have your holiday and enjoy it. Try to switch off and leave all the worries and stress for when you get back. Before you go, make sure you schedule the Blogs to go out as normal, keep paying your marketing company and make sure someone is following up on all of this activity. This just might help with your stress levels when you get back.

If you need help augmenting your resources this summer, check out how we can help here.

How easy is it to buy a G&T?

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We all either love a chilled glass of G&T on a summer day, or at least can appreciate the notion. This is why I was particularly delighted to discover that someone clever had organised a festival dedicated to sausages and gin in Portishead last weekend. The local butchers have advertised it for months wearing colourful t-shirts and promising to supply their lovely sausage creations. What else can you ask for? We were signed up to attend SausageGin as we fondly branded it.

What happened next was unexpected, even if you attend more local events than I do. We turned up on time to see our favourite band, Three Day week. It wasn’t raining and sausages were still sizzling. The gin tent was prominent and there was even a Pimm’s tent. All looked great and as expected so we headed to the gin tent and asked for our long-awaited G&T. It was then promptly explained to us that we needed to go to another stand to get a glass, come back to them to buy the G and then go to the Pimm’s tent for the T…. Guess what happened: we ended up with wine from the pub instead.

I have no idea how well the gin tent did at the festival; the overall event was popular and pleasant. However, as someone who promotes sales for a living, the convoluted G&T sale was a lesson I had to share with you. It is so easy to do this; we all have a story or two to tell about how we forgot an important small detail that made our campaign a disaster. I just think it’s worth reminding you that if you want people to buy, you need to make it easy to do business with you.

This means that if you are planning a marketing campaign, you need to make sure that all the links work, the landing pages download quickly and your contact details are nice and bold in case someone wants to contact you. It also means that if you can provide a ‘one click service,’ don’t make it three. People’s time is their most important asset so make sure you respect that.

Sometimes this means that you are better off working with marketing and business development experts who can help you consider the best way to take your product to market. This might save you some costly mistakes like the above. Visit our website for more details.

Intent data, what and why?

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I have written before about the five obstacles to making a sale as described by Zig Ziglar, one of which is desire. It makes perfect sense that people will not buy from you unless they have a desire – also referred to as pain – which forces them to do something about a situation. The Million Dollar Question is of course, how you find out that a company in your target market is having an issue which you can solve…

One of the latest buzz words in the B2B industry is intent data marketing; in this Blog I attempt to explain what it is and how it might be used by SMEs.

What is intent data?

There are many definitions out there, here is my favourite one which was taken from a Blog written by Aberdeen, who are a supplier of Intent-based marketing and sales solutions:

‘Intent data comes in two flavours: First-party and third-party. First-party intent data is user behavioural information you capture on your own website, in your CRM system, through customer feedback, or application logs. Third-party intent data is user behavioural information that is collected by co-operative networks of B2B publishers via user registrations, tags, cookies, or tokens embedded within a website’s code.

An intent data provider captures online buyer behaviour, tracking specific companies’ active research levels against specific solutions / products / industry categories. The data is then used to calculate an intent score, which indicates the likelihood that the company actively researching will make a purchase in the category.’

Is it worth focusing on?

Most analysts seem to agree that purchasing intent data is not a cheap solution. It, of course, depends on the platform you use and your requirements. Many companies might also be uncomfortable with putting many eggs in the ‘data basket’ particularly when it involves spying on people’s behaviour.

That said it seems to be an effective way of identifying warm leads who might be easier to convert. Building a pipeline in the B2B environment can be both lengthy and costly so finding ways to make it more efficient should not be sniffed at.

The next question is of course, is it a solution that can be used by SME’s or is it more geared towards corporate? I believe it is the sort of solution which is open to any company if they are prepared to invest the time and budget in making it work for them. Any company can improve their first party engagement through using good content, calls to action and effective customer journey on their website. Third party intent data is an area where relatively high costs may make it less accessible for SMEs.

Intent Data for SMEs

When it comes to marketing and sales SMEs, in general, have smaller budgets, less resources, time and expertise. This means that they often end up unaware of new solutions that might be all the rage in the marketing world. Whilst intent data sounds like a big, complicated term, a lot of it is not new. Moreover, you may already have some of it at your fingertips. Here are some examples:

Google Analytics reports
Lead Magnets
Downloadable materials
Social Media
E-mail marketing

The important thing is to understand how you use this data to increase your lead conversion. We now offer a new lead generation product which combines using intent data with direct marketing. Read more about it here.