Total Marketing Solutions

Following on from our earlier post, I recently spoke at national accountancy conference on the subject of marketing-led CRM and its’ role in professional services businesses. Whilst only a small number of those present did already have a CRM system up and running, a much larger number were aware of the importance of implementing a suitable system for their company in the near future. But what exactly is the relationship between a CRM system and marketing, and why does it matter?

It’s fair to say that both Marketing and CRM remain misunderstood by many companies, regardless of size and business sector. In its simplest terms marketing is all about your customers - getting to know then, segmenting and then targetting them, whilst matching your proposition to their needs. Companies obviously then need to communicate effectively with their customers, ensuring their expectations are met - if not exceed. All this of course needs to be measured along the way to ensure the right strategic direction is taken or tweaked as appropriate.

The level of knowledge required by businesses to be able to compete effectively across the many platforms available today now requires this level of understanding not as the exception but as the rule. Unfortunately, many companies who have purchased a CRM system have regarded this a just a “software” purchase, but a CRM system is not just an external programme to be bolted-on to your business. It can and should permeate every facet or your business, enabling you to get closer to your existing and potential customers, to more effectively manage your existing customers and to maximise each opportunity represented by your customers.

A truly effective, marketing-led CRM system will help you grow your brand and your business effectively and profitably in a more targetted and measured way. Whilst it’s not easy to do well, it’s certainly worth investing in a good CRM system to enable your business to compete more effectively.

Could Customer Relationship Management - CRM - be the new marketing? Without doubt it’s an increasingly important tool to help you grow your business by getting you closer to your existing and prospective customers. It also helps you better manage your existing client relationships and can help you to maximise the opportunity represented by each client. With the right CRM system in place, companies can grow their brand and their business in a more cost-effective and targetted manner than ever before. This all sounds too good to be true, and in many cases it is - simply because a CRM system is seen purely as a software purchase. The wider implications of having accurate, shared and relevant information available across your entire business are often missed and the approach to a new CRM system gets bogged down in the technicalities.

Whilst it is of course important to ensure the correct technical specification is in place, it is crucial to the success of any CRM system that you first decide on what you want the system to do for you.  Ideally a good CRM system should provide information  across your whole customer engagement cycle - including marketing, sales and customer support, together with the relevant analytics and reporting which will enable you to better understand the effectiveness of your business and to closely analyse your customers’ behaviour.

But a good CRM system still won’t create relationships with your customers and add value all on its own. With a new emphasis on customer service, it’s still marketing which drives businesses forward, creates relationships and adds value. For a truly successful CRM system a good starting point is to develop a new approach to communicating with and managing your customers - and then making the software part of this overall approach.

Together with our colleagues at Market Equity, we held a breakfast meeting in Truro at the beginning of December for growing businesses in Cornwall. The undoubted highlight of the morning was the thought-provoking session delivered by Professor Malcolm McDonald on how to develop a meaningful marketing strategy for your business. Professor McDonald is Emeritus Professor at Cranfield University School of Management and Chairman of Market Equity. He cut through a lot of the mystery surrounding marketing to talk about what really matters when developing a clear strategy for growth. We’re in the process of putting together a short video of the session and will be posting it here in the next couple of weeks. We’re also looking into arranging further events later this year along similar lines for businesses based in the South West and will keep you posted on any future dates.

We’ve just added another fantastic resource to our website by TMS consultant and branding expert Dave Wilson. This new resource looks at all the key aspects of branding and the impact they can have on your business. Dave argues that branding not only impacts significantly upon your marketplace, but also on the value, longevity and sustainability of your company. Find out what he has to say about all things branding here.

We’re finalising details of a rather special event to be held in Truro in December for high-growth entrepreneurial companies based in Cornwall (apologies to anyone unlucky enough not to live here!) The event will focus on how these companies can put together a market-led strategy to secure their future growth ambitions. We’re putting together a truly world-class panels of experts both on strategy development and the financing of high-growth companies. It promises to be a unique and incredibly valuable event for entrepreneurial businesses throughout the Duchy. We’ll publish the full details during the next couple of weeks.

Can you remember your last great experience?  I thought I could quote mine - but after a great first interaction the company let themselves down on every future action!  I think every company has an element of great service - but is it consistent? Is it reliant on key members of staff or embedded in the culture of the organisation?With increasing expectations and the ability to tell the world what you are thinking,  ensuring that your customers come away happy is now essential to the business strategy. With the increase reliance on technology, the personal touch can be lost, with the processes driving the experience and not the customer!Take time to listen to your customers, not just on ‘tick sheet’ questionnaires, but talk them about what it feels like to be a customer, what are their motivations and issues. A recent conversation with an outpatient  identified that his biggest concern was ‘being forgotten‘ how simple to solve by staff just reassuring the waiting patient!

It’s a staggering statistic but on average  1- 5% of customers account for up to 40% of company revenue. It’s even more staggering when these companies confess to being unsure about who their top - i.e. most profitable - customers are. Our consultant Rennie Gould has seen this problem surface many times with clients who were struggling to maximise their profitability because their marketing strategy failed to focus on their profitable customers. He’s delivering a marketing masterclass in Kuala Lumpur at the end of May to highlight this issue for delegates from across Asia. He’ll focus on customer importance and profitability - placing them at centre stage when it comes to developing a marketing strategy which will deliver real profit. We’ll post more information on the masterclass shortly - in the meantime you can visit the organisers UNI here.

Our last post was going to neatly lead onto the importance of marketing planning (click here for our official take on the importance of developing a good marketing plan.) But then a piece on the BNET report by business coach Ian Sanders outlined the approach taken by one Joe Oliver, of eco-entertainment consultancy Bash Creations. Whilst many would argue that in today’s landscape having a marketing plan cast in stone is far less appropriate than a flexible approach to a fluid marketplace, Joe actually has no marketing plan at all.He has found that his more liberated approach has enabled his company to be more enterprising and more robust for survival in difficult times. He has four tips for navigating your way through the unpredictable business landscape without a big strategic plan:


1.    Think fluid. Don’t get stuck to a rigid strategic plan. Instead, see where the water flows and trust your instincts — not your spreadsheet — in pursuing new options. Make sure your business is agile enough to react to market trends or new innovations in technology. If you spot a new opportunity, you don’t have to check it’s on the plan first — just go for it.
2.    Prototype. Test your ideas in the real world. Better to launch beta versions of your website, so you can evaluate and tweak as you go, rather than trying to perfect the model before you launch. Otherwise you might never get the site off the ground.
3.    Reinvent. Learn to love change and be prepared to rethink what you do and how you do it. Maybe your business feels a bit stale, a bit stuck. You might need to shake up your organization so your clients start thinking differently about you. Re-energize your organization by taking your team on an ‘away day’ to brainstorm new ideas; think laterally about how you can re-engineer your offering to grow the business.
4.    Think goals, not plans. Set objectives for the year: deadlines to meet, products to launch. It’s important to know what you want to achieve — if not necessarily how you’ll get there. This allows you to think big without initially worrying about the details. A goal may be “I need to get a new client every month.” Perhaps you don’t have a strict linear plan for how you’ll actually achieve that — you just start off the instinctive way: word of mouth, social networking, client meet-and-greets, and so on.  You can’t chart this activity on a graph, but mentally focusing on the goals will help you reach your desired outcome.

Ian argues that a timeline or a spreadsheet can’t capture those opportunities that arise from serendipity and random meetings, but if you remove the traditional business planning mindset, you’ll be liberated to grow your business in line with how the world really changes — not with what it says on a spreadsheet.
It’s a brave stance and not for everyone, but it certainly seems to suit the way Joe works and has been able to develop his business. So perhaps in this new economic landscape of 2010 it’s time to take a look at how you work and how you are best able to grow your business - choosing the appropriate path somewhere between “planned to within an inch of your life” and the rather freer approach adopted by Joe. To find out more about our thoughts on marketing planning and marketing plans follow this link.

Following on from last week’s post, what happens once you’ve got a clear idea of where you want to take your business and have a carefully crafted business and marketing plan? If it’s early days for your company then it’s time to think about developing a clear, concise marketing strategy to help you achieve your objectives. If you already have a marketing strategy, given the significant changes in the economic landscape over the past year, it’s also a good idea to revisit your strategy to check for relevance. You may well have been treading water for the past year or so in terms of marketing activity. But during this time, how far have you deviated from your initial marketing strategy in order to survive? And how do you get back on track?

Whether developing a marketing strategy from scratch, or helping clients find their way back to where they want to be, as marketing strategy consultants we ask our clients to think about three key areas:

1. Identify just how much your competitive landscape has changed. Have any new competitors emerged? If so, what are similar services of products are they offering? How have your existing competitors changed in how they tackle this new geography? Understanding how your existing and new competitors are looking to tackle the new landscape of 2010 will help you better position yourself in the market and ultimately better compete against all competitors.

2. Re-examine your target market. Time spent researching any changes amongst your target market in buying trends will give you a clear picture of who your customer is, what influences their buying decisions and what changes they are facing. Again, a clear understanding of your customers will enable you to position yourself appropriately and compete more effectively.

3. How relevant is your product or service? Whilst you may have been chasing every sale at all costs in recent times - and understandably so - this can sometimes dilute the unique set of  benefits you are able to offer. Rewriting your positioning statement can be a very useful way to make sure you are clear about what you offer, who to, and why people should buy from you. Being clear about what you offer makes it easier to communicate your particular benefits to your chosen target markets, making for more effective marketing.

Once you have a clearer strategic marketing direction, you can then set about developing appropriate marketing plans to bring real results. To find out more about how to develop effective marketing plans and marketing planning please follow this link.

When we’re asked to meet with potential customers to help them develop a suitable marketing strategy for their business, rather than hitting them with a “death by powerpoint” presentation on the virtues of tactical marketing,  we always ask what their plans are for their business and if they have a clear, well-defined business strategy in place. And in many cases, the answer is a rather resounding “No!”

But why do we ask about a business strategy if all the client wants is some help with their marketing? The answer goes right to the core of how we do business. Every piece of marketing advice we give our clients is designed to deliver results - and if it’s not part of an overall strategic direction, it’s impact will not only be severely limited but also a potential waste of valuable marketing budget. It might also be entirely inappropriate if it doesn’t reflect the strategic objectives of the company.

Our starting point for developing a marketing strategy always has to be a clear understanding of what our client wants for their business - how do they see their company developing in the future? Are they perhaps looking to sell the company in the next couple of years and enjoy an early retirement? Or are they looking to secure a steady 10% growth over the next five years with a secure dividend stream? Both directions of course have totally different mindsets and both will require a completely different marketing strategy designed to help achieve their own specific outcomes.

For many smaller, owner-managed businesses, the business strategy is inextricably intertwined with the more personal objectives of the business owner themself. Rather than looking for the quick marketing fix (there isn’t one by the way!), we take the time to listen - to their hopes for the business, the issues they are facing and the potential barriers preventing them from achieving their objectives. We first of all help them to bring clarity to their thinking and ask them some searching questions about what they really want for their business. Once we have achieved a clear view of where they would like the business to be in 2,5 or 10 years time, we can then help them develop a clear business strategy.

Once the business has a clear strategic direction to follow, we’re off and running. We can then develop a specific, appropriate marketing strategy which really will deliver the required results. It’s not a quick fix, but it works - that’s what makes us experts at what we do. To find out just how we go about developing effective marketing strategy, take a look at our resources page here.