Flexible working, an agile workforce, going plural, OBW (outcome-based working) – the impact of Covid has led to a rapid change in employment models.
One of the challenges that ambitious SME’s face today is how to maintain an effective, robust marketing capability while hard decisions have to be taken over headcount and budget. Nowhere are the benefits of accessing an agile workforce, who provide an activity-based contribution, felt more than when an SME requires a less than full-time input from a multi-disciplined team.
Similarly, the business to business buying process is moving and moving fast (look out for our forthcoming article on selling via ZOOM). When you’re ambitious for growth and looking to identify new prospects, you can’t just fill a room full of cold callers and expect to get the job done anymore. It’s wasn’t how our prospects were buying a year ago, and it definitely isn’t now. And we need to be buyer aligned...
We need to recognise that buyers will try to introduce sellers in to their buying process much later. It’s the sellers who still manage to get involved at an early stage who will achieve the most success….
Let’s take a step back and consider why the need for effective marketing is more and more important. Increasingly the business community is buying products and services the way we are buying personally. In fact, let’s take a step further back still and recognise that none of us buy our own stuff the way we did ten or maybe even five years ago.
The creep of the online marketplace is pervasive, the Lockdown has further accelerated its dominance. Whether you’re ordering replacement electric toothbrush heads from Amazon or arranging that same day essential item of clothing from ASOS or Net-A-Porter.
Often when we want something, we do a little research. And that research now usually online. We read reviews, compare prices, take counsel from friends and colleagues. There’s a huge amount of information available, its conveniently presented, its often fun, sometimes addictive. When temperatures are below freezing or the tarmac’s melting it’s definitely more convenient than traipsing into town and doing your homework there. And when you have to wear a mask as well!
Given that these buying behaviours are now effectively enforced, what do we do? Apart from the intelligence we get delivered by a simple search request of google, we have LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Glassdoor, Trustpilot – the list goes on….
All very interesting I hear you say, but how does this information help us to get more leads for the sales team? Well a common definition of marketing is that it is “helping people find and buy your product or service”. And the more you help, the more they will buy right? So, the more information about you, your team and your products and services that is located conveniently for people to access is good right…?
And wow! what a range of places we need to place that helpful information. And what a range of skills we need to get it there. Because we know that our customers don’t just want a specification of what they’re going to get. They want a high-level summary of the benefits (a blog?), a more detailed technical analysis (a whitepaper), they might want to know if it (or you?) looks right (visuals), who else has it (case studies), what do they think and which of your team impressed(testimonials). And you need a great website too.
Well that’s ok because you probably have all the information they need somewhere and you can probably find all the people you need, with their various skills, to get it into a tidy state and so at some point you can take your learnings from your private life and apply them to your business life.
Except of course you have a day job, and although you can identify potential employees you don’t have the expertise to identify the good ones. Furthermore, it’s not just one. You need access to a full range of marketing disciplines including:
- Copy writing
- Blog creation
- Brand development
- Data management
- Marketing automation
- Web design
- SEO
With around 20% of the UK working population furloughed and a stagnant job market, how do you identify, onboard and manage new staff and incorporate them into an existing team?
You need a marketing team, but the chances are you don’t need them all day every day. You need a team that will drop in and out of your cost structure as your requirements dictate. You need agile workers, task-based workers who are used to working remotely. You need an entirely outcome-based relationship with your marketing team because you don’t want marketing at all.
WHAT YOU ACTUALLY WANT IS LEADS.
At Reach Revenue we provide a cost-effective solution to this problem. If we wanted to sound posh, we would describe it as “marketing as a service”, which it is. But in the more singular parlance of time-poor business leaders its outsourced, fixed price, lead generation.
We will work with you to understand your objectives and we will create a plan to meet those objectives. We will incorporate input from the various marketing disciplines that you need to deliver a lean, efficient service designed to supplement your existing capability. We will provide the service at a fixed monthly cost. We will report back to you on a monthly basis, our reporting focusses on results not just activity.