Total Marketing Solutions

Just when everyone was getting to grips to the various social networking methods and how to use them, the online social space has just got more crowded with the arrival of a new competitor to LinkedIn called BeKnown. It has been developed by Monster, the jobs website, and perhaps the most interesting thing about BeKnown is that it resides within Facebook as an app. This now means that Facebook’s estimated 700 million users will be able to create a network of professional contacts, separate from friends and family contacts. Primarily developed to help jobseekers find their next new position, it’s going to be interesting to see just how effective BeKnown will become. Especially as Facebook use is banned at many companies within the UK - not that anyone spends time at work looking for a new job….

And if this major new development is not enough, Google has finally unveiled Google+, their new social layer designed to change the whole search engine into one giant social network.  It is in effect Google’s answer to Facebook, with users able to share photos, videos and links with their network of friends. It’s only just being field-tested, so it will be interesting to see how the Google leviathon squares up to Facebook.

For companies who have now dipped their toes in the water and who are using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, this is a new opportunity to exploit - but just how good they will be remains to be seen. We manage the social network accounts of a number of clients in our role as marketing consultants, and each one has seen a significant benefit since starting their social networking campaign. Whilst evidence of success remains more anecdotal than factual but what does seem certain is that companies who do not embrace social networking are missing an opportunity - and one which just got considerably bigger. After all, if Google and Facebook are developing and expanding their services, there just might be something in it!

We’ve just been contacted by an old client to revisit their organisational structure, specifically to look at how to improve the relationship between their sales and marketing functions. It’s a common problem for many organisations and one that continues to prove difficult to not only resolve but to also identify the most appropriate solution for a client with their own set of specific sales and marketing challenges. As marketing consultants, we’re not only able to look at developing effective marketing strategy but we also have extensive sales and sales management expertise.This which gives us a fairly unique perspective on the way sales and marketing can and should be able to function together to achieve their respective - and common - objectives.

But where does it all go wrong? Why are these two functions so often at loggerheads? It’s fair to say that for many companies there is still a misconception that marketing is simply a case of developing the right communications to arm the sales team out in the field. Whilst getting the message right is of course crucial - this can only happen once the right strategy has been developed and implemented. Without the right strategy in the first place, anything that follows will automatically miss its mark. No amount of internet wizardy and glossy brochures will generate sales if this initial thinking isn’t right. And nothing loses the confidence of a sales team quicker than poorly developed marketing strategy.

To avoid sales teams losing faith in the marketing strategy, it’s crucial to develop a sound strategy they can believe in.  Take a look at our sales section for some advice on how to go about this.  Time and effort spent developing a sound strategy will pay dividends in sales team performance and ultimately the achievement of your corporate objectives.

Prompted by the fact that, five years down the line, we’re still working with some of our very first clients (see this month’s news story), it felt like a good opportunity to look at what we offer not only our long-standing clients but also clients new to TMS and to consulting. First of all, it’s the nature of being a good consultant which dictates that in order to survive, you need to be able to understand how your clients business works - quickly. We’ve worked with companies across such a wide range of sectors - from medical equipment to solicitors - but what doesn’t change is the time and effort we put in at the beginning of any relationship to fully understand our client’s business and the particular set of issues they are wrestling with. Once we have this understanding, we then use this information to inform how we tackle the challenges our client is facing. With longer-term clients like Sysmex, this means that for any new projects we’re able to hit the ground running - an extension of their marketing department.

How we then go on to help our clients very much depends on the specific nature of their request for assistance. We often carry out in-depth market and customer analysis to help our clients gains a detailed understanding of their market and their customers. Armed with this information, we can then develop an appropriate strategy. This might sound like the easy bit, but it this development of a robust strategy able to deliver real results which needs to be right. This is where our expertise in what works and what doesn’t, what makes for good marketing practise and what will specifically help our clients achieve their objectives really counts. We pride ourselves on our ability to develop marketing strategies that really work for our clients.