Total Marketing Solutions

We seem to have spent most of the last month submitting tenders for various pieces of work. Only time will tell if all our blood, sweat and tears will have paid off. But whether you love them or hate them, tenders are an integral part of winning new business for many companies, large or small. And they’re here to stay. Companies and other organisations now more than ever need to be sure that their budgets are used to maximum effect and selecting the right partners lies at the heart of ensuring the best return on investment. With competition for even the smallest contract gaining in intensity,  winning competitive tenders is becoming an art form all of its own. So what is the best way to go about winning your next tender?
Experience shows that first of all, a dose of brutal honesty is key to you submitting a meaningful tender where you at least have a shot at winning. Deluding yourself about your experience or your company’s capabilities will only waste time, valuable time which could have been spent on more fruitful business development activities. With this increased competition, companies are now able to look for an exact fit for their specific requirements. Once you have decided you could deliver the tender, making sure that you demonstrably satisfy all the required criteria is key. Make sure you do your homework around the tender and understand the wider implications too.
In addition to making sure you can tick all the relevant boxes, writing a successful bid not only requires a concise, precise language but also a degree of creativity to make you stand out from the crowd. Sounds easy, but getting the right tone and content is a real skill. Making sure that it accurately reflects your capabilities to convince that you are the right company for the job takes a lot of time and effort. Deciding whether you spend your time on the tender rather than other development activities is another matter and one that can only be answered by your own particular set of circumstances. There’s nothing like an empty pipeline to get you sending off a flurry of tenders, but if none of them are a good fit, it’s probably time which could have been spent more fruitfully. If your pipeline is looking rather sickly and your track record of winning tenders is not exactly Olympian, then give us a call on 0845 201 1618.

Just when we all thought we were spending too much time searching for all manner of things online, it turns out that this might be slowly changing. Gone is the novelty of sifting through endless search engine results. With a rapidly-increasing number of apps now targetted at our own specific information needs, there is a slowly-emerging trend in reduced online searching. Instead, more people are relying on a well-targetted and highly relevant app to deliver the information required - be it a certain type of restaurant in a specific city to the latest surf report for your favourite beach (Crackington Haven in case you’re interested!)

So what does this mean for those companies already investing in SEO and PPC campaigns? As their customer base slowly develops a more sophisticated taste for the more personal information they are looking for - rather than the information they don’t want - companies will need to develop a deeper understanding of how best to communicate with their customers. Watch this space……

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.

As marketing consultants we’re increasingly in demand to help our customers improve the buying experience of their own customers. What started off as seemingly another fad from across the pond has in the past couple of years grown considerably in popularity. But can customer experience management really deliver results? In its early stages it was difficult to talk about any concrete ROI, the real value delivered by spending any money on looking at and then improving the “Customer Experience.” But now companies are more likely to ask how to get it right and do it cost effectively, rather than whether they need to do it in the first place.

So where to start? The obvious starting point is gaining a clear analysis of a customer’s relationship with the company at every point of contact, in other words to create a map of their journey. With a clear idea of how a customer buys from you, it’s then easier to look at how the relationship forms. And in order to build this relationship into a longer term, beneficial arrangement - rather than a one-night stand - there needs to be a shift away from a focus on the transaction to building a relationship with the customer. This is particularly true for businesses where technology, whilst speeding up the purchasing process, destroys all customer intimacy. Yet this is where an improved customer experience can have the greatest effect - both in terms of building a better relationship with your customers and of course - ROI!

Just when everyone was getting to grips to the various social networking methods and how to use them, the online social space has just got more crowded with the arrival of a new competitor to LinkedIn called BeKnown. It has been developed by Monster, the jobs website, and perhaps the most interesting thing about BeKnown is that it resides within Facebook as an app. This now means that Facebook’s estimated 700 million users will be able to create a network of professional contacts, separate from friends and family contacts. Primarily developed to help jobseekers find their next new position, it’s going to be interesting to see just how effective BeKnown will become. Especially as Facebook use is banned at many companies within the UK - not that anyone spends time at work looking for a new job….

And if this major new development is not enough, Google has finally unveiled Google+, their new social layer designed to change the whole search engine into one giant social network.  It is in effect Google’s answer to Facebook, with users able to share photos, videos and links with their network of friends. It’s only just being field-tested, so it will be interesting to see how the Google leviathon squares up to Facebook.

For companies who have now dipped their toes in the water and who are using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, this is a new opportunity to exploit - but just how good they will be remains to be seen. We manage the social network accounts of a number of clients in our role as marketing consultants, and each one has seen a significant benefit since starting their social networking campaign. Whilst evidence of success remains more anecdotal than factual but what does seem certain is that companies who do not embrace social networking are missing an opportunity - and one which just got considerably bigger. After all, if Google and Facebook are developing and expanding their services, there just might be something in it!

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.

Prompted by the fact that, five years down the line, we’re still working with some of our very first clients (see this month’s news story), it felt like a good opportunity to look at what we offer not only our long-standing clients but also clients new to TMS and to consulting. First of all, it’s the nature of being a good consultant which dictates that in order to survive, you need to be able to understand how your clients business works - quickly. We’ve worked with companies across such a wide range of sectors - from medical equipment to solicitors - but what doesn’t change is the time and effort we put in at the beginning of any relationship to fully understand our client’s business and the particular set of issues they are wrestling with. Once we have this understanding, we then use this information to inform how we tackle the challenges our client is facing. With longer-term clients like Sysmex, this means that for any new projects we’re able to hit the ground running - an extension of their marketing department.

How we then go on to help our clients very much depends on the specific nature of their request for assistance. We often carry out in-depth market and customer analysis to help our clients gains a detailed understanding of their market and their customers. Armed with this information, we can then develop an appropriate strategy. This might sound like the easy bit, but it this development of a robust strategy able to deliver real results which needs to be right. This is where our expertise in what works and what doesn’t, what makes for good marketing practise and what will specifically help our clients achieve their objectives really counts. We pride ourselves on our ability to develop marketing strategies that really work for our clients.

With all the current ongoing furore surrounding privacy laws, the real star of the show is turning out to be twitter. People have long appreciated the immediacy and uniqueness of twitter, without necessarily being able to turn that appreciation into an advantage in business terms. But few will disagree now that twitter is here to stay and that - used carefully - it can develop into an extremely powerful tool to complement your other online marketing activities.  But where to start? Once your account is up and running, take the time to search out who you want to follow - segmenting your target market sectors where relevant. Then make sure you follow everyone who starts to follow you and build your audience from there. You can keep up to date with what people are saying about your company or products and services by searching for your ID, company name and industry segment. Set up searches for things you’d like your company to be known for - and then tweet a response every time that search term comes up. And make it easy to share by adding a twitter button to your website. There are countless online guides to getting the most out of twitter but the best approach is to jump in and get tweeting.