Month: October 2019

The relationship between sales and marketing is famously a rocky one. If something goes wrong in the sales funnel, it’s easy to point blame at one another. If you work B2B, it’s likely that you’ve come across this argument around lead generation and conversion at some point in your career. Sales will often suggest that marketing have provided low quality, unqualified leads, or even a lack of leads. On the defending side, Marketing may imply that Sales don’t follow up leads and if they do, they don’t do it properly.

So how do you take the best from each department and turn the relationship into a happy union, resulting in business success for all?

Persona production
Marketing are fantastic at knowing the industry and who they should be targeting in regards to job titles, seniority and location. However, Sales can provide a valuable insight into which professionals both are and aren’t converting as leads and why. By working together and incorporating market research, comprehensive personas can be produced, or current versions refreshed. This will help Marketing to better target desired audiences and Sales to personalise pitches – resulting in increased acquisition.

Content collaboration
There’s an ongoing Marketing perception that the content they produce specifically for Sales is rarely utilised. Having worked together building and defining personas, take your new-found relationship to the next level by planning for and producing strategic content that targets leads at just the right time in the sales cycle. Naturally, Sales observe real FAQs and issues throughout the lead nurturing process and Marketing can turn these challenges into helpful solution assets.

Another great content strategy to consider is ghostwriting. Marketing can help build the credibility of Sales by positioning them as thought leaders in blogs and on social media. This will help build trust and most importantly, convert leads.

Strategy syncing
Turn your content collaboration into a long-term shared strategy that incorporates sponsored ads, email campaigns, social media, blogs, whitepapers and events (to name a few areas – depending on your business!). Supporting a shared message between Sales and Marketing will unify brand communications and tackle common goals.

Goal sharing
Defining shared goals may seem like an odd suggestion at top-level but there are a few insightful KPIs (key performance indicators) that complement the Sales and Marketing mix. After all, we are all working towards the same end game of improving the bottom line. Our partner and B2B lead generation software provider, Lead Forensics, suggest a variety of interesting KPIs including:
• Number of leads per channel
• Number of leads per asset
• Conversion rate of landing pages
• Ratios of MQLs (marketing qualified leads) to SQLs (sales qualified leads) and closed
• Lead scoring
• Email open rate
• Email click-through rate
• Cost of content

CRM integration
Integrating a Sales and Marketing CRM, such as Hubspot, is a brilliant solution for data sharing and visibility. Make the most of your CRM by setting lead scoring. ‘Lead scoring is the process of assigning values, often in the form of numerical “points,” to each lead you generate for the business. You can score your leads based on multiple attributes, including the professional information they’ve submitted to you and how they’ve engaged with your website and brand across the internet. This process helps sales and marketing teams prioritise leads, respond to them appropriately, and increase the rate at which those leads become customers.’ Learn more here.

Consistent communication
We all know that Sales have a competitive nature, but rivalry can be detrimental to business growth. Sometimes what can be seen as a lack of respect is actually a lack of understanding. In a busy environment, it’s important to set aside the time to keep each other up to date with anything that may be relevant to the other team, discuss your shared strategy, ideas and goals using easy to follow terminology. Analysing what both Sales and Marketing believe is working, who it’s working for and what could be improved will enhance synergy and streamline a route to success.

How do we know this works?
After exponential growth in our first two years as an outsourced sales agency, our ever-growing client base were often looking for other marketing services that could be provided to them within the group. We sensed a niche opportunity to help clients with their full marketing and sales demand creation by launching our marketing services line. As demand generation specialists, we build intelligent marketing capabilities to deliver marketing qualified leads to sales teams within ambitious sales led organisations.

Our sales and marketing services teams have been successfully working side-by-side for several years now – supporting one another, as well as clients, with their sales and marketing needs. We know that having a happy union between sales and marketing produces results and believe that this relationship should be at the forefront of businesses who are looking to grow.

If you are interested in exploring how Air Marketing can help you grow your business, contact us today: 0345 241 3038 / contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

In-house vs outsourced. You’re a business owner or a Marketing Director and you need to decide whether you invest in building a marketing team to conduct activity in-house or outsourcing it to an agency – so how do you decide?

Clearly there are pros and cons to each option and to ensure that you are making the right decision for your business, we’ve taken a look into some of the considerations below.

In-house

Pros

An in-house marketing team are absorbed within the culture of your business each and every day. They are bought into the company growth and success. This means that they live and breathe your brand voice, values and mission, providing consistency throughout all of your marketing activity.

Your in-house team benefit from continual training opportunities on your product/service portfolio as they will be working alongside the likes of Product Managers, Operations Directors etc. This gives great clarity of your offering, messaging and benefits to your customers etc which will be advantageous to your marketing activity.

Communication in many instances can be quicker and more streamlined. Unless you are a large corporate, you’re likely to be working in the same time zone, in the same language and in many cases, in the same office.

There is a perception that you have more control of your marketing team if they are working for you in-house rather than outsourced. This point is debatable as some marketing teams work very independently and many are now flexibly much more homebased, but there is still a perception that as they are ‘your’ team, their workload, working times and focus areas are within your control.

Cons

You have to invest your time and budget into the recruitment and appointment of the right marketing individuals to make up your team.

You have a high ongoing cost for the management of this marketing team – not only should you consider salaries but also all costs such as national insurance, work socials, training budgets, travel budgets etc.

Finding the right talent for your budget can be a challenge for some businesses. There are so many aspects to your marketing strategy and plan that you need a wide range of skills and expertise which are not necessarily found within just 1 or even 2 people. If you’re unable to find the right talent to cover all aspects, you may have to face the extra expense of supplementing your team with freelancers.

Creative idea creation is an extremely important aspect of the marketing team, but when your head is within the brand every single day it can have a negative impact on your creativity, making you more stagnant.

Outsourced

Pros

You have no people overhead costs, only the agreed agency spend budget to be concerned about. For this agreed agency spend budget, you’re likely to have a wide range of skillsets at your fingertips. The individuals employed within an agency should be up to date with access to the latest trends, technology and training to deliver the best possible experience to their clients. You benefit from this without having to invest your time alongside money to gain the skills of these marketers.

In many cases an outsourced marketing team are likely to have much more focus than an in-house team. Whether it is a project or a retained activity/number of hours an outsourced team have to be accountable for what happens to your investment and will be keen to demonstrate the value they have added. This means they are likely to be working in a much more efficient yet focused way to meet/exceed KPIs and target deliverables.

An outsourced agency can bring a new perspective because they spend their time being immersed in different campaigns/projects/brands. They experience what works well for other companies or industries and they can take those learnings and help apply them to your business. This can open an in-house marketer’s eyes to a tactic or strategy that they may have never considered before.

The flexibility and reactiveness of an outsourced team will always be greater than that of an in-house team. Whether you’re looking to outsource all your marketing activity or just a project. Whether you are a strategic marketer who needs assistance with delivery, or you have delivery resource in-house but you’re lacking the strategic thinking. All these bespoke options can be available much faster and more flexibly by working with an outsourced team rather than having to go through further employing in-house.

Cons

At the beginning of your partnership with an outsourced agency you will have to invest your time in immersing and training the agency on your brand, products/service offering and importantly your tone of voice. It is to be expected that even after this initial training you’re likely to need to support the agency with proofing/approving content and design in the early stages of an engagement. But the longer your relationship grows and the more you partner together; the outsourced team should become an extension of your in-house team.

In some cases communication can be slower between in-house teams and agency teams. Not being based in the same offices, sometimes not in even in the same country/language can add restrictions. What we find important is setting a clear process at the beginning of our partnership together. What is the best method of communication, how often should we be having account calls and who needs to be involved, how often do you want/need reports etc.

For some companies, outsourcing is an expensive option in comparison to utilising individuals who already reside in-house. Marketing should always be viewed as an investment rather than an expense, but if costs simply outweigh the value you feel you’d achieve from outsourcing then you need to seriously consider if it is right for your business.

Consistency of quality can be a con for partnering with an outsourced agency. If you experience a gap in perception between what you the business considers as good quality and what your outsourced agency considers as good quality, this is going to cause issues. Whether it is a one-off or an ongoing series, you have to be assured that the agency you have chosen to partner with are aligned to your perceptions, your aims and your expectations. If you cannot align, your partnership is unlikely to be long lasting.

There is a lot to consider when it comes to in-house vs outsourced and is not a decision to be rushed. Research is key, alongside analysing your business’ goals against the skills and experience and strengths and weaknesses of your in-house team or your available talent pool. Be realistic not optimistic with this decision. What is the best decision for the business at this moment in time and for the near future to reach your business goals? There is of course nothing to say that you don’t opt for a mixture, dependant on your budgets, where you seemingly are able to acquire ‘the best of both worlds’ if this works for your business, your team and your bank balance.

Key points to research include:

• Checking your values align with the prospective agency
• Understand if they have the expertise to help you reach your goals
• Checking their case studies and testimonials for real life examples of their work
• Starting the conversation with them to have a frank chat about your challenges and their experience to help you

If reading this has inspired you to get in touch for a chat, reach out on 01392 796702.

Are you marketing or are you starting a movement?

‘Marketing, it’s just about making things look pretty and fussing over colours and typefaces.’ Believe it or not, I’ve heard someone say this recently, and I’ll be honest I was surprised. I know that this is the opinion of the skills of the industry from times gone by, but I actually believed that these (simply incorrect) opinions had diminished. But it looks like us marketers still need to educate people on what our skills and goals really are.

Now I appreciate that every marketer, marketing department and organisation will have a different focus, different budgets and different methods which they find successful. But I think there is an overriding change of mentality here which should be considered. What is the goal – to simply conduct ‘some marketing’ or to create a movement towards your brand.

You’ll notice that over the last few years, across the globe but especially here in the UK, we’ve felt a movement happening. It’s been across every channel that we come into contact with whether it’s, watching a documentary on TV, hearing a news bulletin, overhearing discussions between colleagues/friends/family, seeing more ‘environmentally friendly’ branding and packaging, the list goes on.

The movement I am referencing of course, is that of climate change and the impact that humans are having on the earth including plastics. You may be thinking, why is a marketing agency writing about this, unless they want to be seen to have extra corporate social responsibility (CSR) points by covering this topic.

No, that isn’t the reason for this blog.

It was brought to my attention recently that a successful movement, such as the climate movement, has all the same ‘ingredients’ that you require for really powerful and effective marketing movement. So let’s look into that:

MESSAGE

A strong, clear message that people want to be part of, get behind and believe in. For any marketing movement, the message needs to be truthful (we’ve all seen a car wash garage who are the best in the UK, then you drive up the road and see another, how many are there claiming to be the best) and uncomplicated (people need to remember your message to get behind it).

AUTHENTICITY

There are so many messages trying to capture our attention every day, how do you get a message to people that will actually get heard and make a difference? This is where authenticity makes the most impact. People are inherently less trusting in this digital age, so you need to gain peoples trust and find a way to ensure people care about the values behind a marketing movement. People put more research goes into the why before any form of engagement can begin, especially the younger generation, as they want to align themselves with brands who share their values and who they truly believe are authentic.

CHAMPION

Putting ‘a face’ to a brand adds to your authenticity, providing it is a carefully chosen and seen as the right face. Don’t purely pick the person with the most followers, the cheapest or the one that the MD likes the most – find the champion with the most affinity who can really drive your marketing movement forward in the right way.

DELIVERY CHANNELS

You’ve got your message, your champion and you’ve established your point of authenticity, now you need to get this out to the public. Deciding on the most effective delivery channels to get your message in front of people to form your following is something that can be a struggle. It all takes time and in many cases costs money which can be restricted for some brands. There are so many delivery channels available meaning it is important to conduct the right research to discover the most relevant channels to utilise for your key audience and even why they use those channels – are they listeners, are they active, do they just utilise it for research etc. Social media, videos, TV, snippets in magazines, posters, gathering protests; are all examples of delivery channels available to your brand.

FOLLOWING

The way that any brand can make a difference is by creating a strong and loyal following. If a following isn’t established, you just become another noise in an already noisy world.

As a brand your aim is to create a movement, give your followers something strong to grasp hold of, keep them aware of everything that you are doing and give them a reason to stay passionate about your brand.

Not every brand can afford to create a movement like that of the climate movement, that I know. However, what I take from this is that for marketers to really hold their ground within organisations and at the board, we need to be able to demonstrate the value that we hold. We have the ability to create a movement, with the right ingredients and the right budget, and with this in mind the skills that we bring to the table should be not only utilised but appreciated. Every brand would love to reap the benefits of starting a movement – so is it time for us to rethink how we market?

I’ll leave you with one last thought:

“It is still not too late to act. It will take a far-reaching vision, it will take courage, it will take fierce, fierce determination to act now, to lay the foundations where we may not know all the details about how to shape the ceiling. In other words, it will take cathedral thinking. I ask you to please wake up and make changes required possible.” ― Greta Thunberg

Opinion piece by Head of Marketing Services, Verity Studley-Wootton.