Do you know the secret to marketing success?

The ‘secret’ to successful marketing communications lies in understanding your sales process, and the psychology behind why your customers buy (or do not buy) from you.

To understand your sales process you need to consider how you sell your product or service. Any sales professional will tell you that no marketing tool or supporting sales patter will help to close a deal if your offer doesn’t suit the customers ‘needs’. To truly understand customer needs, you need to put yourself in their shoes and ask ‘what do they want from the deal?’

In short the ‘secret’ to marketing success lies in understanding and evaluating the customers needs and identifying with the value that is being sought by customers, not the value that you think they want.

So why don’t more businesses get this right? Here are some of the most common mistakes:

1. Businesses don’t know how to sell effectively—they concentrate on selling their products/services, not satisfying the customer’s needs.
2. Businesses do know how to sell effectively but management choose to keep their sales teams at arms length, often developing their marketing strategy without consulting those in front-line sales.
3. The marketing and design agencies appointed by businesses don’t take time to understand their client’s sales process and therefore spend too much time focussing on a solution without first evaluating the problem.
4. And finally, buyers themselves don’t always know the answer to the question ‘Why do you / don’t you buy from us?’ In other words, they don’t have a clear picture of their needs.

So where should you start?

1. Speak to your sales teams. Take time to evaluate and understand the reasons behind your own sales success and evaluate why they think your clients buy from you and why they do not.
2. Speak to your customers. Take time to review your own sales effectiveness with them. Get back in touch with the basics of your business success—strengthen your customer relationships and understand why they buy your product or service from you. Normally customers are only too happy to help—just ask them!
3. Conduct market research. Evaluate and understand how your competitors market themselves and find out why buyers buy from your competition? With this in mind you will be able to see a pattern exists. Surprisingly often buyers buy through desperation rather than because their needs are perfectly met.
4. Review your own buying process. What was the last significant purchase you made—personally or professionally? What prompted the need? What process of evaluation did you undertake before you made your commitment? Why didn’t you buy from the competition, was it purely a price and service decision or was there something more to it than that?

Once you have done this, you are then in a good position to create a marketing strategy which identifies with your customers’ real needs and therefore better supports your sales process—no more ineffective marketing which doesn’t deliver a return on investment!

Your dedicated Essential Marketing team deliberately consists of sales, marketing and design experts so that we’re able to apply and explore these basic principles with every client that we work with. If you’re interested in knowing more about the secret behind successful marketing communications, please contact Ryan on 0117 907 9930.

How much should you spend on marketing in 2008?

How much should a business spend on marketing is a question we frequently get asked, particularly at this time of year, when businesses are getting focused on the New Year ahead.

There isn’t a definitive answer to setting a marketing budget, but in the B2B sector, spending 1% annual turnover on ‘maintenance’ marketing is a general rule of thumb, though this may vary dependant on your business process. This budget should be allocated to activities which maintain or build on your position in the market place and typically supports ongoing promotional activities.

When times are tough, many businesses look at discretionary spending. It may be tempting to regard marketing as discretionary, however this a major mistake as marketing is the lifeblood of any business and should be regarded as an investment.

Also don’t wait until it’s too late! Many businesses wait until there’s a competitive threat or a business issue to spend money on marketing (sometimes throwing money at marketing until the problem has gone away!). Businesses that have a continuous marketing spend minimise competitive threats which helps even out the peaks and troughs in sales.

Working out where to spend your budget is equally important. The best place to start is to look at the activities which generate most leads. Analyse those leads to understand which generates the best sales results. Also look at the areas where you’re not currently generating leads and the reasons for this. Is there potential for growth in these areas? Once you’ve identified the areas of focus, put together a marketing campaign which supports this.

Unique situations, like launching new products or services, require separate marketing budget arrangements. If you’re launching a new product or service in 2008, build in the marketing costs to your specific product launch budget.

Your foundations, i.e. your identity, website and primary sales literature should be considered as a capital investment. Any successful business understands the importance of investing in solid foundations as they will see the business through rocky times and conversely provide a solid platform for growth.

If you’d like help in planning your marketing for 2008, then please give us a call. We’d be happy discuss the options available to you and provide you honest advice.

Sales and Marketing—the perfect partnership

It doesn’t matter how you dress it up, the ultimate aim of B2B marketing is to drive more sales. To do this, a business must clearly understand its sales process.

The majority of businesses will identify with the sales funnel model, which categorizes the four stages of the customer cycle:

1. Top of the funnel—Lead Generation

   At this stage, the aim is to fill the funnel with an adequate number of prospects. As a rule, businesses should integrate between 3–5 activities into their lead generation process. These might include cold calling (by telephone or in-person), direct mail, networking, web marketing, etc. Focusing on one activity alone could leave you vulnerable if the success of that activity fluctuates for any reason.

2. (Inside)—Lead Management

   The aim here is to nurture prospects and to shorten the sales cycle and to do this, knowing the conversion timeframes and ‘leakage’ rates are essential. It’s only from knowing these that you can put together an effective prospect nurturing program.

3. (Bottom)—Closing Sale

   Lead generation and lead nurturing activities produce results (both negative and positive) which can be used to measure productivity. Everything is measured at this stage and the results can provide valuable information for the lead generation and lead nurturing stages. Using these results to inform the early stages of the funnel is essential to ensure your activities remain focused on the highest yielding areas.

4. Retention

   It’s widely known that it’s less costly to generate revenue from existing customers than it is to generate from new. Yet so many businesses don’t dedicate the necessary resources to customer retention. Activities at this stage should be focused on building customer loyalty and references (word of mouth) and maximising cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.

All your marketing activities should be justified against each stage of the sales funnel. If it can’t be justified, then it’s probably a waste of money. With the right systems in place, sales and marketing results can be measured at each stage of the funnel. It’s only once these metrics are in place can you truly assess the success of your activities and make the necessary changes to ensure maximum results.

If you’d like to know more about aligning your sales and marketing activities then please call us on 0117 907 9930.

How Solid are your Foundations?

Stable structures are built on sound foundations. The same is true of marketing communications. Brand identities, websites, literature, and promotional campaigns are like ascending floors in a tall building, get each one right and it provides a stable platform for the next. However, it’s easy to forget that these need to sit on the solid foundation which is positioning.

Positioning enables a business to actively carve out a competitive edge. Many businesses have lost sight of their marketing objectives—why customers buy from them—or the edges have become blurred from neglect and lack of focus.

A positioning exercise starts with looking at your industry, your target markets and your competitiors. Researching these areas builds the bigger picture and creates a framework from which a positioning strategy can be defined. Once the framework is complete, a marketing opportunity can be identified which fits your business and provides you with scope for growth.

This marketing opportunity is then captured in a positioning statement and strategy against which all communications are measured to ensure they help you achieve your objectives. Once created, this statement then drives your decisions on branding and brand style for communications, ensuring the right brand image is built in the marketplace.

Like the foundations of a building, the work that goes into positioning is never seen by your customers. Your marketplace will only ever be aware of the way it influences your communications style.

Unsure of your position? Then we can help. Give us a call on 0117 907 9930 for further information. In the meantime, here are some examples of client positioning statements which we’ve recently been involved with:

Total Utopia

A design focused commercial interior design and fit out business.

The Great Indoors

Boxes and Packaging

The UKs fastest growing corrugated packaging business.

Protecting your products

Maxexam

Secure, remote examination software.

Examinations without limitations

Silver Eagle

Innovative EPOS systems for the hospitality sector.

Beyond EPOS

Are you Building Sandcastles or Sales?

The summer months are traditionally a time to relax and ease off the pedal a little. The popular view is that business slows up a bit and customers are reticent to make new buying decisions over the summer months and is often used as an excuse not to do things.

However the reality is that summer is no different to any other time of year. In fact customers actually have more time to consider new business opportunities than at more frantic times of year. After all most people are not on vacation the whole summer (unless you are extremely fortunate!), so summer is the perfect time to take the initiative.

Why not take a new look at summer. Take the time to get on with those jobs that you traditionally leave until the autumn. Take a new look at your marketing and use the summer time to plan ahead, or even better still get out there promoting your business while others are relaxing on the beach?

We’re helping a number of businesses realign their marketing strategy, develop promotional campaigns and plan their general communications this summer, with a view to being ready for the last quarter of the year. If you’re interested in doing the same, then please give us a call on 0117 907 9930 for a free non-obligatory consultation to review your current requirements and a free report on moving forward with your marketing.

Don’t Forget About your own Employees

Every successful company is only as good as the staff that it employs. Needless to say that all companies need motivated, enthusiastic, competent and dedicated employees.

However not all companies take enough care in this respect and as a result there are a lot of employees out there who are not engaged, who are only going through the motions or even worse, disaffected, unhappy and actively (whether deliberately or not) undermining the company. In fact a recent CIPD study showed that around 42% of employees do not feel they are kept well informed about what is going on in their organisation and 47% of employees are looking for a another job or in the process of leaving their current job. (click here to read the full report).

As well as the normal motivators—salary, workplace environment, management engagement—which all play a key part, a comprehensive internal communications programme is one of the key ways to motivate employees.

Many companies now regard internal communications to be almost as important as good external communications. It is not only important to keep employees informed about what is happening, it also helps develop a company culture, plus it is also respectful to employees—and respected employees feel valued, which is a key to motivation.

Good internal communications need to be

• Honest
• Regular
• Informative
• Consistent
• Unambiguous

The best internal communications are always based upon a set of company values that underline what the company stands for—your Vision, Goals and Values.

It is also important that you regularly seek employee feedback to make sure that your communications are appropriate and relevant, encouraging suggestions to improve.

A company with high levels of employee engagement enjoys increased employee loyalty and gains enthusiastic support for its products and services.

Whether it’s newsletters, intranet, promoting company initiatives or facilitating training through effective communications, Essential Marketing can help. If you want help of advice on internal employee communications, then please call us on 0117 9079930 for a free consultation and proposal.

The Four Deadly Sins of Poor Communication

Creating a clear, differentiated marketing message that gets through to your target audience is the goal of every marketer!

If you are looking to score big with a killer marketing message, then steer well clear of the following deadly sins:

1. Me, Me, Me

   Don’t make the mistake of focusing the message on you. This is the most common mistake made in marketing. Before creating new communications, you should take time to know your audience and make your communication to them in a message which is appropriate to them.

2. Try to cover too much

   It’s easy when creating a marketing message to think that you have to get across all your benefits in one go… this can lead to rambling muddled communications. It’s better to focus on getting across one key concept, memorably, than many concepts which are instantly forgotten.

3. Overcomplicating

   Why do we feel the need to impress with buzz words and complex sentences? When communicating to your target audience, keep it simple. Overcomplicated communications can cause your audience to tune out.

4. Lose the human element

   Why is so much communication created as if there were no human beings involved? How many times have we read about ‘Strategic Directions’, ‘Aligning strengths’ or ‘Consumer-oriented’? Language like this is neither engaging nor inspiring. So make your message simple and with a personal appeal.

Are You Suspicious of Marketing

Are you one of those doubters that are suspicious about marketing? When we talk to people about marketing, not everyone connects. This can be for a number of reasons.

• Marketing and its benefits are not understood.
• Marketing tends to be a medium/long term commitment, when lots of businesses only think short term.
• Marketing has to fight off a traditional product and sales orientation.
• Sales and marketing are often confused. Sales is tactical and marketing is strategic.
• Marketing is regarded as expensive and difficult to justify.

A good and active marketing plan is key to all businesses that want to develop in a structured, rather than haphazard, way. Marketing is information-driven and based upon sound market research. So how to start?

Some Marketing Hints

• Have a ‘living’ Marketing Plan which you review frequently.
• Make sure that your sales effort is linked to your marketing plan.
• Focus all business decisions on the customer.
• Customers buy benefits not attributes.
• Know and focus on your USPs (your unique selling points).
• Invest in good marketing and your investment will be more than repaid.

We are always happy to help you unravel the supposed ‘Black Art’ of Marketing and to help you move forward with confidence. If you want to know more, please give us a call on 0117 907 9930.

Marketing Explained

With the launch of Essentials Guide, we thought it apt to go back to basics and look at the meaning of the word at the very heart of our business—marketing.

What is marketing? It’s often misunderstood, but quite simply, marketing is everything that you do to promote your business—from the moment you conceive your business idea to the point where customers buy from you on a regular basis.

However, to ensure your marketing is effective, your business needs to define its marketing strategy. In nearly all businesses the marketing strategy is simple and the same—to grow profitable sales. It’s the reason that businesses exist and is the ultimate reasoning behind every business decision.

Once this strategy is in place, a business needs to identify its marketing message, i.e. the style of communications which will attract the right customers and hence to grow profitable sales.

A marketing message should:

• Be designed to achieve a competitive and profitable advantage.
• Be simple and clearly understood by customers and employees alike.
• Not be an afterthought, but rather a carefully planned and executed process.
• Be consistent and regularly reviewed to ensure it remains appropriate.
• Originate from your customers perspective, not your own.

Creating the right marketing message is critical to business success—so make sure you allocate adequate time and resources to getting it right.

If you’re interested in knowing more, please call us on 0117 907 9930. The Essential Team understands every angle of the marketing conundrum and is fully equipped to assist you at each stage of this demanding and critical process.

Are You Open to Change?

We live in a complex business world where change is constant and fast moving. This can make life difficult for the marketing professional, as it means there’s no ‘one-size fits all’ scenario. So without a set formula to follow, how do we adapt to meet the challenge of continual change and the demand to deliver results?

Being open minded to change plays a key role in successful marketing. There are 101 ways a business can market itself, from its name and logo, right through to where and how it advertises. But most businesses under-deliver their potential by sticking to a handful of tried and tested methods, without regularly reviewing other options.

So what are the options available to your business? Here are a few ideas…

• Re-brand. If your image looks dated, a re-brand could re-energise your business to attract new customers.
• Direct Mail. After some research, directly target your ideal prospective customers (don’t try to be all things to all people; you’ll achieve greater success by tailoring your offer to specific markets).
• Email Marketing. All the same benefits as Direct Mail, but without the printing and postage costs!
• Build Strategic Alliances. Join forces with a strategic supplier to market a wider service offering (for example, we are joining forces with an interior design agency on a specific marketing campaign targeting the leisure industry).
• Internet Marketing. Ensure your website is fully updated and optimised to achieve top search engine rankings or look at pay per click and sponsored link options.
• Up-selling to Existing Customers. Are your existing customers aware of your full product range or service offering? If not then educate them! Some form of newsletter, email or printed, is a good vehicle for communicating this type of information.
• Referral Systems. If you do a good job, then don’t be afraid to ask your contacts for referrals. If you haven’t done so already, you could perhaps put in place some kind of reward system for referrals.

So, as the New Year gets well underway, why don’t you take a few minutes to consider all the possible approaches you could take to marketing your business? If you’re serious about achieving better results in 2006, pick at least two that you’re either not doing, or not doing very well—and make a decision to add them to your marketing mix in the coming months.

Remember—always research, test and measure the results of any new activities. That way you can quickly invest more in the things that make a difference to your bottom line and minimise the risk of wasting money on activities which don’t work.