Why outsourcing Sales and Marketing to a single provider makes perfect sense

The argument for marketing and sales alignment has been well-documented in recent years. The growing popularity of account-based marketing and sales enablement is testament to a shift in perception across the industry. And there’s a wealth of research to back it up, in fact by aligning sales and marketing, your business could generate 208% more revenue and enjoy 36% higher customer retention and 38% higher sales win rates.

By working together and understanding each other’s roles, metrics and goals, marketing can attract and nurture better quality leads; glean insight from their sales colleagues and in turn, deliver better quality and targeted materials to help get deals over the line. Equally, sales can commit to following up marketing qualified leads and feeding back information of where that prospect may be in the sales cycle so they can target them with appropriate content. The result is a well-oiled machine that nurtures long-term relationships and results in higher conversions.

And while it seems like a no-brainer, in theory, organisations struggle to make it work for many reasons. In under-resourced teams, dedicating time to sales and marketing alignment feels like an arduous and time-consuming activity that will take time to mature and deliver results, so it continually gets de-prioritised in favour of the next big campaign. When you outsource to a single provider, you instantly access an experienced team dedicated to delivering against your marketing and sales goals and who are skilled at developing a delivery plan that meets your specific needs.

Other businesses don’t have a system supporting shared visibility of campaigns and customer journeys, making collaboration difficult and again, time-consuming. Sometimes it’s merely an imbalance in teams. There may be only one or two dedicated marketers in a sales first organisation. They might lack a content marketing specialism or require further training or experience to support sales confidently. An outsourced partner has already nailed this; they’ve already built a high-performing and aligned team and follow established processes, and have complete visibility of shared systems.

And then, of course, some organisations don’t have any sales and marketing resource at all. If they’ve already outsourced, joining the two functions means close-management of third parties and contractors, which comes with an administrative burden and challenges around contrasting systems and processes. By outsourcing to one expert partner, you can avoid the headaches of managing multiple suppliers. You can make your budgets work harder and have the benefit of working with a team where both sales and marketing are on the same page and know the full details of your campaign.

Supporting the entire journey, with complete visibility throughout

When you outsource sales and marketing to a single provider, you get a joined-up approach proven to succeed. Experienced marketers and campaign managers will use demand generation or account based marketing strategies to drive awareness in your desired markets, nurturing leads through a consistent campaign of engaging content across paid social, email marketing and relevant blog content. These leads will then be handled by expert sales representatives skilled in building rapport, communicating your brand and your offering professionally and reassuringly. The big difference is that all of this activity is overseen by marketing and sales experts who have deep expertise in delivering complex, multifaceted projects, sharing metrics, a CRM and everybody agrees on what constitutes a qualified lead.

How we make it work

Here at Air Marketing, we have the in-house skills, technology and processes to deliver value at every point in the customer journey. We’ve grown from a telemarketing agency into a comprehensive outsourced sales and marketing solution. We offer everything from demand generation and marketing support to complete end to end sales campaigns, SDR as a service and lead generation.

If you would like to know more about how we can deliver aligned sales and marketing initiatives for your business, get in touch: call 0345 241 3038 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

What It Means to You, to Work With a HubSpot Solutions Partner Marketing Agency

Air Marketing are an official HubSpot Solutions Partner. Our team are very proud of this because for an ambitious agency looking to grow, we love the idea of being affiliated with such a huge, successful brand. 

But – what’s the benefit of this affiliation to our prospects and clients? Because ultimately, they are more important than just a great title. 

We completely agree, we are not the sort of agency that runs after fluffy titles and affiliations just to make us sound good. In fact, that is the exact thing that we advise our clients not to do, so we certainly wouldn’t be doing it ourselves. As part of our partnership discussions with HubSpot, we did a lot of our own exploration to fully understand what this partnership means for our prospects and client base. 

So, what does it mean? 

The biggest and most obvious benefit is accessing HubSpot. There are many, many different CRM systems available on the market but there are very few at sensible price points for B2B businesses that allow marketing, sales, service, and IT teams to collaborate, removing friction from the buyer’s journey. HubSpot use inbound as a methodology for growing your organisation. It’s based on building meaningful, lasting relationships with your prospects and customers through valuable content and experiences. It’s also about valuing and empowering these people to reach their goals at any stage in their journey with you. 

Alongside this inbound methodology, the other big benefit is having all touchpoints under one roof creating ‘one version of the truth’. By this we mean that many businesses fall into a similar situation where – sales use the CRM (when they remember), marketing are working from that CRM but also from an emailing platform, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google AdWords, WordPress etc and service or Account Managers are using spreadsheets or another separate system to manage clients/customers.  

This structure means that data is stored in many different platforms so you may not see a clear picture of your prospects or clients/customers – not being able to see a clear picture means you’re restricted in making overall decisions on customer journey, touchpoints and marketing success because your data points are not joined up. Whereas, getting all this data within one platform opens up huge opportunities to understand more about your customer journey, your marketing and sales touchpoints and the ability to pull reports on this data to better understand and compare it.

As HubSpot Partners we are constantly understanding more efficient and effective ways to manage your marketing within this platform. This means that we are focused on crafting programmes of marketing activity which is entirely focused on delivering results aligned to your objectives. Utilising the HubSpot platform to deliver, optimise and transparently report on this activity. This is something that we have been passionate about since inception but partnering with a piece of technology that enables us to achieve this more efficiently is of huge benefit to our prospects and clients. 

Do you have to use HubSpot to work with us? 

In short the answer is no. We are always open to working with clients who use other CRM systems or are launching themselves so have CRM in place. But it will always be our recommendation to have a system, like HubSpot, that allows all your data to be kept in one place to make our marketing efforts and your marketing investment more efficient to deliver success. 

If you are looking for guidance on your marketing strategy or activity, or you’d like to discuss HubSpot as a CRM or lead generation tool your business, get in touch to find out more. Call us on: 0345 241 3038, or send a message to our CRM Manager, Shaun Weston, on LinkedIn.

How to Build and Leverage Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

We all know the phrase first impressions count. Thanks to social media, that first impression now happens before your first meeting with a client. Your social presence, specifically LinkedIn, is a fantastic opportunity for you to breathe life into your business, showing people the personality behind the brand.

Research shows a direct correlation between time spent on developing your personal brand and consumer trust. 82% of customers trust a company when their senior management members are active on social media (GoGulf, 2013).89% of top performing sales people say social networking platforms, such as LinkedIn, are important in closing deals and are part of their sales strategy (SuperOffice, 2020)So this tells us the old adage still rings true – people buy from people and connections matter.

Check out the competition

This is an important litmus test. Before you can start developing your social strategy and content plans, it’s vital to research what your competitors are doing on LinkedIn and use it to your advantage. Look at their most successful posts. What types of content do the people in your desired market engage with? What are the key themes that people are discussing? Think about how you could create content that responds to the conversations you’re seeing in the comments, or start a conversation that matters to you.

Define your tone of voice

When everyone is talking, it’s hard to cut through the noise and make an impression. It’s not about being bold and extrovert. Ithat’s simply not you, it won’t ring true with your audience. Try to find your authentic voice, own your material and don’t be afraid to voice your opinions. Remember, you’re an expert in your business and there’s nobody who knows that story better than you. If you need help telling it, that’s OK. A trusted provider can help guide you on that and draw out the key elements your audience will find most engaging.

Getting started

A basic but important first step is to ensure your profile is up to dateAs mentioned previously, first impressions count and if your profile doesn’t reflect your current role or campaigns you’re working on, it’s going to jar with your audience. Take control of this and let people know you’ve got it covered. Think of it as your own personal elevator pitch. Let people know that connecting with you will open the door to interesting content and opportunities.

Consistency matters

It’s easy to get caught up with posting furiously when you start out because enthusiasm is high, then letting it slide during more hectic times. Consistency is the key to success. An easy way to stay on track is to put together a content schedule. Planning ahead doesn’t mean a dearth of creativity – mix up scheduled content with more spontaneous posts that capitalise on topical industry news.

Content rules

Everyone talks about engaging content but think hard about what this means to you. Maybe you’re a natural storyteller who finds it easy to weave the fabric of daily business life into anecdotes and thoughts that spark ideas. Maybe you’re a direct person who sees something incredible and can’t help but hit share. Whatever your preferred methods, write content that’s enjoyable to read and include relevant hashtags for your industry and target audience. You can even see how many people are following that hashtag just by searching for it (no magic required!).

Get connected

LinkedIn is all about connections; even the biggest influencers send regular InMails and invest time and attention to growing their network through quality, shareable content. They do it because they know it’s the key to staying relevant and part of the conversation.

Join the industry groups that are relevant to your business. This is not only great for refining your content strategy; it provides valuable insight into your customers challenges. If you see a conversation where you can solve a customer problem or offer relevant advice or insight, don’t be afraid to join in. The same principle applies to companies in your target markethit follow, pay attention and engage with their posts.

Connect to people you’ve met at events and webinars. You have a golden opportunity to check in and take that conversation forward. When you’re connecting to people within your industry and target audience – always use a personalised messageThe personal touch will be appreciated and give you the opportunity to have a meaningful on-going conversation that could lead somewhere mutually beneficial.

Don’t forget to review the ‘people also viewed’ section. The great thing about LinkedIn is even with a free account you can build a solid base of qualified contacts, and a little desk research can help you build out a decision-maker map that could be extremely valuable for future campaigns.

Beyond the basics

If you have a company page, utilise the 100 credits available per month to invite your connections to follow the page. 1 invite = 1 credit. When the invitation is accepted, the credit is returned for you to use again, and you’ll receive 100 new credits on the 1st of each calendar month. Don’t let them go to waste as this is a quick and effective way to grow your audience.

If you have the means, it’s worth upgrading to a Premium account or Sales Navigator to take advantage of additional features such as CRM integrations and custom lists. Consider sending regular InMails to engage with your audience – it’s a valuable campaign tool you can easily align with any other regular digital communications and email marketing campaigns.

Invest the time and you will see the benefit

Schedule time in your day to work on your personal brand. If you don’t have the time and headspace to give it the attention it deserves, we can help.

Air Marketing help individuals and businesses unlock the power of a thriving personal brand. We build intelligent marketing capabilities using a mixture of proven marketing tactics to reach your target audience and produce marketing qualified leads for your sales team.

If you’d like to talk more about how we can drive tangible results from your social channels and personal branding strategy, get in touch today on 0345 241 3038.

Morning Buzz Meetings – Demotivating or Motivating?

Motivation can be difficult to achieve in an office environment; hard work can often go unnoticed and the constant pressures of a competitive environment can begin to wear employees down. Research has shown, each day, 10% of employees are absent in call centres due to the lack of appreciation felt in the workplace. This research alone highlights the need, especially in my industry, for touchpoints which allow managers to show their appreciation to their staff, highlight individual achievements and deliver motivational objectives. In this blog post, I will share my experience and tips for achieving the above in one morning meeting.

So, how do you maximise your morning buzz meetings to encourage individuals and create high performing sales teams?

  1. Strategise

43% of highly engaged employees receive feedback at least once a week, however, employee reviews should be happening more often and take less time.

There’s nothing worse than a long-winded ‘motivational’ meeting that is set to demotivate from the offset. It’s therefore important that you plan and prepare; effective buzz meetings should be concise and last no longer than 15 minutes, be armed with your objectives, focus on team wins and pinpoint your collective areas of learning.

  1. Set the tone

Our physical behaviour influences our mental and emotional approach to the day.

Think of ways to get your team moving, have a walking meeting, introduce a quick-fire game or play uplifting music to get the blood pumping. Increased blood flow creates a positive mood, resulting in employees being more equipped to handle objections, take on new challenges and meet personal milestones.

  1. Spotlight success

69% of employees say they would work harder if they felt their efforts were better recognised.

This is the perfect opportunity to feature the activity which you want to encourage. Celebrate your teams wins, even if they don’t lead to a direct sale and avoid focusing on losses. Recognising individual and team achievements has become my common practise, as I know this makes the individuals in my team feel more confident and in turn, pushes them to set bigger targets.

  1. Support and encourage

41% of companies that encourage colleagues to support one another experienced a significant increase in customer satisfaction.

If you want to create a great support network and boost team morale, encourage employees to praise fellow team members, this assures no one’s hard work slips past management and brings the team closer together. If your team is feeling positive it will show in their client conversations, resulting in better relationship building, more sales and higher ROI for the company.

  1. Strengthen from learnings

92% of employees agree that negative feedback, if delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance.

Remember, the key for creating a great buzz meeting is positivity. Take negative feedback from the day before and turn it into takeaways and learnings for the team to overcome together. If a client isn’t happy with an element of your team’s performance, encourage your team to think of tactics that will better engage them and the people they are selling to.

  1. State the day’s focus

90% of business leaders believe that an engagement strategy could positively impact their business, yet only 25% of them have a strategy in place. It’s therefore no surprise that only 40% of employees are well informed of their company’s goals, strategy, and tactics.

It’s time to hit the reset button and introduce a new action plan for the day. Ask each individual team member, “what do you want to achieve today?” I have found that when the whole team acknowledges personal targets, that individual immediately feels more accountability to meet their goal, success is more likely to be achieved and goals are more likely to align to the company’s bigger picture.

 

At Air Marketing, we have experienced great success from our initiative to focus on our internal company culture. Achieving £18 for every £1 our clients invest, we are performing higher than the industry’s £11 average. I personally believe this success is down to the time we take out of selling to promote appreciation, individual achievements and team objectives. The culture at Air is one that I haven’t experienced anywhere else, our team’s positive and supportive nature is infectious, thanks to our daily buzz meetings we continue to deliver fantastic results for the companies we support.

Opinion Piece by Annie Blundell – Account Director, Air Marketing