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.

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.

In today’s ever-changing economic landscape, there’s at least still one constant – and that’s the number one challenge facing small businesses up and down the country. Still at the top spot in nearly every survey taken this year, the most challenging issue facing small businesses remains “How to Find New Customers.” As marketing consultants, we’re speaking with new and potential clients every day across a wide range of different market sectors – and their one common goal is how to find new customers.

As small business owners, many of our clients started their business around their own particular area of expertise or interest. And as is often the case, many are also extremely involved in the day to day running of their business, which leaves little time to spend on driving their business forward. And the harsh reality is that, even with a unique product or service, without a well-defined marketing strategy to guide your business towards future growth, running a small business can feel more like drowning rather than plain sailing. Whilst we’re not guaranteeing that a solid, thoughtful marketing strategy to follow will remove all obstacles ahead, it can help small business owners more clearly identify where they want to take their company and what they need to do in order to achieve their growth objectives. To find out how we can help, please call Mark Brewerton on 0845 201 1618.

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.

The newly created Google Instant is one of the most significant changes to how the search engine helps us access information on the internet in recent years. Google Instant will speed up searches by an average of 2 – 5 seconds – quite a difference by anyone’s reckoning. This means those of us who run any type of search campaign could see a shift in the results generated – but not even google is sure just what sort of impact this new development is going to have on their own Adwords service. The CIM’s own digital marketing expert Daniel Rowles has taken a close look at how this faster service will impact on Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, always a popular marketing tools for small to medium-sized businesses with limited marketing funds. To find out more, click here.

Now that all the hoopla has subsided it’s time for our new coalition government to get on with the job in hand – and what a job it is. Of the many cabinet appointments announced during the last 24 hours, one of the most interesting to us was that of Vince Cable. As a small business ourselves, and with our customer base ranging from small start-ups to European organisations with a turnover of £20m, we’re extremely interested to hear what our new Business Secretary Mr. Cable has to say for himself. He once described himself as a friend to business, but a “critcial friend.” What this will mean for small to medium-sized businesses across the country is as yet unclear, but his appointment seems to have been thus far met with widespread approval. Apart from the financial sector of course, where one financier was quoted in the Independent this morning as saying that, if Cable’s plans for bank regulation are adopted, it’ll be time to send for the men in white coats!

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.