Total Marketing Solutions

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.

The original 4 P’s of marketing - Price, product, place and promotion - devised back in the early 1960’s by the American Marketing Association - have been extended and tweaked over the years. They still represent the basics of how to shape your strategic marketing thinking but times have changed - even the definition of marketing itself has changed dramatically over the last 60 years. Duct Tape Marketing’s John Jantsch has come up with an interesting take on what the 4 P’s might stand for in today’s ever-changing marketing landscape. Today’s marketing is all about building trust, according to John, and today’s 4 P’s are all about how a customer experiences dealing with your company.

P stands for Passion - when a business owner has a real passion for what they do, good things can happen. Leading with passion and connecting to others within your company and your customers will bring about a desire to commit.

P stands for Purpose - why you do what you do. A clear definition of your purpose builds trust - amongst your employees and your customers - because it enables them to see their own values in action.

P stands for Positioning - with a clear understanding of purpose it’s easier for companies to then position themselves within their market.

P stands for Personality - letting all those who come into contact with the business understand its personality and actually experience its purpose.

Whilst you might not agree with John’s suggested new P’s, it’s an interesting slant on a tried and tested way of looking at the basic marketing building bricks of your company. To read his blog in  full, click here.

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.

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!

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.

Creating a solid marketing plan which effectively and accurately reflects your overall marketing strategy can be a daunting prospect for even the most seasoned marketer. Where to start? How do you know what will work and what won’t? As strategic marketing consultants we like to get stuck into the nitty gritty of developing real marketing plans and seeing them bring real results. So how do we do it?

Like any good plan, your marketing plan sould be realistic and achievable and above all else - measurable. It’s also not cast in stone, so if you need to change tack or make amendments having realised something isn’t working, then it needs to be flexible enough to accommodate any changes along the way. A robust marketing plan is always a good idea, but it becomes crucial when companies are looking to grow their business by securing external funding.

To find out more about the TMS way of developing a marketing plan, click here.