Total Marketing Solutions

We seem to have spent most of the last month submitting tenders for various pieces of work. Only time will tell if all our blood, sweat and tears will have paid off. But whether you love them or hate them, tenders are an integral part of winning new business for many companies, large or small. And they’re here to stay. Companies and other organisations now more than ever need to be sure that their budgets are used to maximum effect and selecting the right partners lies at the heart of ensuring the best return on investment. With competition for even the smallest contract gaining in intensity,  winning competitive tenders is becoming an art form all of its own. So what is the best way to go about winning your next tender?
Experience shows that first of all, a dose of brutal honesty is key to you submitting a meaningful tender where you at least have a shot at winning. Deluding yourself about your experience or your company’s capabilities will only waste time, valuable time which could have been spent on more fruitful business development activities. With this increased competition, companies are now able to look for an exact fit for their specific requirements. Once you have decided you could deliver the tender, making sure that you demonstrably satisfy all the required criteria is key. Make sure you do your homework around the tender and understand the wider implications too.
In addition to making sure you can tick all the relevant boxes, writing a successful bid not only requires a concise, precise language but also a degree of creativity to make you stand out from the crowd. Sounds easy, but getting the right tone and content is a real skill. Making sure that it accurately reflects your capabilities to convince that you are the right company for the job takes a lot of time and effort. Deciding whether you spend your time on the tender rather than other development activities is another matter and one that can only be answered by your own particular set of circumstances. There’s nothing like an empty pipeline to get you sending off a flurry of tenders, but if none of them are a good fit, it’s probably time which could have been spent more fruitfully. If your pipeline is looking rather sickly and your track record of winning tenders is not exactly Olympian, then give us a call on 0845 201 1618.

A recent study produced by the DMA in conjunction with Alchemy Works claims that consumers are responding more favourably than ever before to email marketing. The report - which credits improved segmentation and better targeting for this growth - blows apart some common myths about the effectiveness of email marketing.

Whilst many might believe that consumers are being bombarded by endless numbers of unwanted emails, the report clearly contradicts this. Over 60% of respondents were signed up to 10 or fewer senders - a surprisingly low number considering the options available to your average consumer. So whilst your email is not necessarily clamouring for attention amidst a sea of competitors, getting onto that list of 10 represents another challenge.

In 2010, one in 10 consumers stated that 50% or more emails they received were of interest. In the 2011 report, this number increases to one in three.

Amongst the more surprising findings was that fact that only 3% of consumers pick up their emails on a smartphone, whilst 61% don’t check or use email at work.

What the report reflects is that there is now a greater understanding of how to segment markets and how to make email content appealing to specific segments.  It also shows that 45% of respondents don’t act on an email immediately, but file the information for later use. This makes response tracking far more complex, but would hint at an even greater effectiveness for your email campaign than straight click thru numbers.

Our experience as marketing consultants with expertise in digital marketing enables us to help customers get on their customers top ten list with relevant content to targetted customers.

Whilst we are always at great pains to stress the strategic nature of our marketing consultancy, we obviously do get involved in helping customers to develop or improve their online presence. We have over the years  helped customers develop some highly successful websites across a variety of sectors, working together with our web design partners.

But as any quick sortie into google will testify, setting up a website is no longer the sole preserve of the web designer. Thanks to an ever-increasing array of web design tools, together with cheap hosting packages and idiot-proof content management systems, companies are able to launch a website at a considerably lower cost than hiring a web developer/designer. But what does this new trend signify for the vast number of highly skilled web developers out there?

Thankfully it does not appear that the writing is on the wall for the truly creative, talented developer. What has happened is that, whilst the barriers to entering the online market are being lowered every day, finding the right person to create a truly compelling, commercially robust online presence for your company is still a difficult goal to achieve. The technical, routine aspect of setting up a website is now no longer shrouded in mystery. But creating a valuable online resource, which accurately reflects and promotes your company and your brand values in an original way is still something of an art.

The combination of engaging content, fantastic design, powerful SEO and bespoke coding is still beyond the capability of any off-the-shelf package. And the importance of getting each of these core elements absolutely right is still at the heart of what makes a great website really work for you. Web design isn’t dying, it’s just growing up.

As marketing consultants we’re increasingly in demand to help our customers improve the buying experience of their own customers. What started off as seemingly another fad from across the pond has in the past couple of years grown considerably in popularity. But can customer experience management really deliver results? In its early stages it was difficult to talk about any concrete ROI, the real value delivered by spending any money on looking at and then improving the “Customer Experience.” But now companies are more likely to ask how to get it right and do it cost effectively, rather than whether they need to do it in the first place.

So where to start? The obvious starting point is gaining a clear analysis of a customer’s relationship with the company at every point of contact, in other words to create a map of their journey. With a clear idea of how a customer buys from you, it’s then easier to look at how the relationship forms. And in order to build this relationship into a longer term, beneficial arrangement - rather than a one-night stand - there needs to be a shift away from a focus on the transaction to building a relationship with the customer. This is particularly true for businesses where technology, whilst speeding up the purchasing process, destroys all customer intimacy. Yet this is where an improved customer experience can have the greatest effect - both in terms of building a better relationship with your customers and of course - ROI!

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.

With all the current ongoing furore surrounding privacy laws, the real star of the show is turning out to be twitter. People have long appreciated the immediacy and uniqueness of twitter, without necessarily being able to turn that appreciation into an advantage in business terms. But few will disagree now that twitter is here to stay and that - used carefully - it can develop into an extremely powerful tool to complement your other online marketing activities.  But where to start? Once your account is up and running, take the time to search out who you want to follow - segmenting your target market sectors where relevant. Then make sure you follow everyone who starts to follow you and build your audience from there. You can keep up to date with what people are saying about your company or products and services by searching for your ID, company name and industry segment. Set up searches for things you’d like your company to be known for - and then tweet a response every time that search term comes up. And make it easy to share by adding a twitter button to your website. There are countless online guides to getting the most out of twitter but the best approach is to jump in and get tweeting.

We’ve recently come across an interesting report published by Marketing Week in conjunction with SAS UK. The report follows in-depth surveys amongst over 500 marketing decision-makers last October so identify their current plans regarding marketing spend and their take on future trends. It makes for very interesting reading indeed. Whilst seven out of 10 of the marketers surveyed stated that they expect this year to represent a significant opportunity to capture market share and to grow, only 45% of those surveyed are convinced that their company can adapt to some of the changes it will face, but not be in a position to adapt to all of them. The report highlights that danger that, having managed to survive an uncertain past, marketing has still not learned how to plan for an uncertain future.

The report goes on to show that whilst many marketing professionals and those responsible for marketing within their organisation have come to terms with some of the major changes in marketing conditions during the last year or so, many have yet to grasp the significant changes in how marketing itself has changed. Multichannel routes to market are now embedded in the marketing mix and like it or not - they’re here to stay, or rather to continuously develop and mutate and change the marketing landscape. Worrying, however, is the fact that marketers themselves are continuing to struggle with their capabilities across such a wide range of potential marketing channels. The report also claims that marketers’ skills are developing more slowly than the role these diverse channels are increasingly playing. The report concludes that as changes to the market are a constant, then marketing itself needs to be able to keep up and change too.

A recent article by direct marketing guru Martin Wright has shed some much needed light on the shortcomings of short-term and tactical approaches to communicating with customers, which appear to be increasing in the current uncertain climate. His recent article “How contact strategies outperform tactical campaigns” is based on his considerable expertise in direct marketing and his appreciation of what approach really brings the best results. He argues that a co-ordinated sequence of integrated communications will be far more effective than a series of tactical and repeated messages. So what at first seems like a low-risk, low-cost approach to generating some new leads actually is nothing more than a waste of valuable marketing spend.

Martin continues to explain the importance of a “Customer contact strategy” - in other words, what to say to who and when to say it. As marketing consultants working with all sizes of organisation, it’s still surprising that so many companies spend money on one-off campaigns without having a clear idea about what they want to say, which existing or potential customers they want to say it to and when the best time would be. But a little time spent on pre-planning a sequence of integrated, targetted communications with some clearly defined goals should ensure that every penny spent on communicating with your customers is generating a return on investment.

Martin then goes on to compare simple and more complex contact strategies, looking at how they work and analysing responses from single contact, repeated and then fully co-ordinated  communications. There are even some case histories from companies which present a compelling argument for spending some time thinking about your Customer Contact Strategy before embarking on your next communication with your customers.

It’s fair to say that we’re passionate about the value of sound strategic thinking when it comes to building a business. No amount of expensive marketing communications will really achieve the results you want without heading in the right strategic direction first of all (see previous blog!). A well-constructed strategy, which integrates sales and marketing to clearly communicate your company’s position - who you are, what you do and why customers should choose you - will go much further to achieving your objectives every time.
But with uncertainty the name of the game in today’s ever-changing market, it’s still mind-boggling just how many companies still have no clear strategy at all. But what’s even more disconcerting is the increasing number of companies who, having spent time and sometimes money on defining their future strategic direction, are now changing direction almost overnight. It’s this growing trend to confuse their own inability to execute with a bad strategy that seems to become more and more commonplace. Failure to execute a strategy is very different from the failure of a strategy itself.
If you take a close look at your sales and marketing to find that your message varies from sales person to sales person and from once piece of marketing communications to another, it’s time to look at your overall strategy. If your marketing plan keeps changing every time a new customer is identified, it’s time to revisit your strategic thinking. And if your marketing plan only gets an airing when sales take a downturn…. you get the drift. Strategic drift that is.
Thankfully strategic drifting, whilst highly contagious, can be contained and treated. The starting point is to redefine a marketing strategy which is unique to your business, which integrates sales and marketing, fully understands the target markets, relevant product positioning and just who your competitors are. The next step is then to construct a unique marketing mix which accurately communicates your company’s value across channels relevant to your customers.  Sounds quite daunting? Take a look at our marketing planning section and white paper for some guidelines.
Crucial to the success of any redefined, more relevant strategy is the support of your team. Including sales and marketing in the whole process is an absolute necessity for strategy development to be meaningful and to stand a fighting chance of success within the company.
Once the strategy is clear, it’s time to develop and then implement the marketing plan. So many companies have very detailed strategies with an even more detailed - and expensive - marketing plan. Any successful implementation has to be realistic - scale back if necessary, but make sure you implement!
Once you have started to implement your marketing plans, it should go without saying that every activity should be monitored, tweaked if necessary/possible and then measured for overall effectiveness. Measurements should be relevant to each activity and ongoing - webpage hits, online orders, number of successful proposals and of course sales. Only be keeping track of what is working for you and what isn’t will you be able to better utilise future marketing spend to greater effectiveness. And by constantly checking where you are now and how you are doing, you’ll avoid drifting off course.

A bit of a rant this week I’m afraid. We were recently approached by a well financed start up company looking for some help in putting together their go-to-market plan. Not an unusual event in that we get many such approaches. The company in question was being launched by a number of highly professional and intelligent Directors all of whom had a strong professional services background. The Directors had ambitious growth plans for their business and recognised that they needed some help with their marketing and business development plans - particularly in relation to digital marketing. SO FAR SO GOOD. Sounds like potentially a perfect customer where TMS can add lots of value by helping them put together and implement a truly market-led strategy together!

Then it all starts to go horribly wrong….

We explained what we do & how we add value and how we have delivered significant results for our clients and we started to explore their needs in real depth. At this point it becomes apparent that there is a disconnection between what we would define as a market-led strategy and what they believe the term means. It is immediately apparent that they are talking about a marketing communications strategy - website, SEO, PPC, advertising etc whereas what we are talking about is obviously far more fundamental than that. We explained that without having a market-led strategy in place first, there is a huge risk that any marcomms strategy will probably end up targeting the wrong people with the wrong messages using the wrong communications channels ie. A potentially huge waste of time & money!

Try as we might, we failed to convince them of the value of putting together a market-led strategy BEFORE diving into what are essentially tactical deliver plans (it is a misuse of the word strategy to apply it in the context of marcomms in our opinion  - marcomms are tactical activities) Upon exploring this further it became apparent that the reason that they didn’t see the need to look at developing a market-led strategy was because they felt that they had already done this for themselves. At this point my blood started to boil a bit & I felt like asking them “what experience & expertise have you got in the field of developing marketing strategy - what qualifies you to do this?” I stopped myself because it is clear that despite being very clever people in their field, they had no real comprehension of the concepts of marketing strategy and they were not prepared to listen and learn. They thought it was simple and that they could do it for themselves equally as well as people with years of experience and practice.

Upon reflection I think the point that dismayed me most about this was the fact that even educated, intelligent people completely underestimate and undervalue the  expertise & experience that we have in developing marketing strategy. I wouldn’t presume to think that I could argue a legal case (even though I watched every episode of LA Law!) nor would I think that I could prepare someone’s accounts. I recognise that to do these things you need expertise & experience that comes from years of training & practical application - so why don’t people think the same way about Marketing Strategy? After all it is an equally essential professional discipline. I’m feeling a bit like Don Quixote tilting at windmills because it is just another example of how my profession has failed to convince people of our worth and the commercial value that marketing can deliver when done properly by professionals.

Sorry for the rant!