You can still hear the echoes of the champagne corks popping but you know the real work lies ahead. Any business that’s been through rounds of investor pitches, meticulously prepared presentations and hundreds of handshakes to successfully secure investment, knows that feeling of celebratory relief. When you’ve been focussed on securing the money for so long it’s hard to shift to the next phase. Your strategy is clear…in theory. And now someone else believes you can do it too, which presents a new pressure, living up to the pitch.
How do you ensure you make your budgets work as hard as possible, so you can deliver the profitability your investors need to see and achieve your predicted growth?
Start with a solid self-appraisal
You’ve likely got a very strong idea or product to sell, some great market insight and a formidable sales strategy. What do you think will be the hardest part of your strategy to get right? Are you struggling to distil the benefits of your product into a targeted marketing strategy? Maybe you need help reaching decision makers. It’s worth thinking about this at the outset. If you’re in the SaaS industry, for example and the bulk of your time and expertise has been focussed on developing your software, it’s going to be a steep learning curve for your team in areas where your strategy demands immediate excellence in sales or marketing. Look at your budget and make some decisions about buying in expertise. Working with experts who can nail your brief and give it the time and attention it deserves, will save you money in the long run.
Don’t limit your own success
Maybe you really are the best person to do it all, but think of the scale of the opportunity. Do you have time to do everything? Or, will you free up valuable diary space if you carefully outsource elements that you believe you could oversee with a guiding hand? Think about where your money and your time are best spent. If you’re the face and the voice of the business, you’ll eventually need to relinquish some of the day-to-day.
Build your supplier network
A trusted supplier is genuinely worth their weight in gold. They can give you a steer on where to allocate budget and where you’ll get the most return on investment, provide a valuable sounding board for any ideas or concerns you may have and genuinely look out for opportunities on your behalf. Good suppliers are an extension of your team, bridging that gap in knowledge and expertise and working with you collaboratively to achieve mutual success. They won’t sell you anything you don’t need but instead make even the tightest budget align with your business aims.
You can be ambitious and realistic
When it comes to your business, there’s nothing wrong in thinking big. We’re living in an age of business insight, if you’ve got an ambitious target in mind you can work out what your conversion of leads needs to be to achieve your goals. A trusted supplier can advise of typical conversion rates and how they’ve achieved this for their other clients, giving you an educated idea of what’s realistic for your business and your timescales.
At Air Marketing, we’re experienced in working with clients to maximise their outsourcing budget to achieve their business objectives. We’ve worked with businesses at every point in their journey to leverage the best return on investment for budgets that need to deliver results. We work with clients to create a tailored, blend of services that will deliver the best conversion rates in their desired market. If you’d like to hear more about how we can help your business grow or show you how we’ve helped businesses from all sectors achieve success. Get in touch today, call us on 0345 241 3038. Or hear more from our existing customers here.
