It’s been another challenging couple of years for businesses amid economic uncertainty, rising living costs and changes to legislation.
According to the latest Business Insights report from the government, 68% of businesses have some form of concern, including falling demand for goods and services and increased costs.
When it comes to marketing, we mostly see businesses taking one of two actions when faced with economic uncertainty; reducing marketing spend, or throwing money at shiny new tools and tactics in search of the elusive quick win.
However:
Reducing marketing spend = reducing sales
Shiny new tools with no strategy = throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks
When resources are scarce and time is tight, it’s important not to forget the basics – the ‘why’ of your marketing.
By focusing on the actual results you’re trying to achieve, and directing your investment at clear activities with clear goals, it is possible to get your business back on track through your marketing.
After 20 years of executing campaigns for businesses of all sizes, we know that the most effective marketing is anchored to specific business outcomes. Everything else is just expensive noise.
So what are the actual outcomes you should be focusing on?
Generating leads
Ultimately marketing should be filling your sales pipeline. Whether that’s through digital channels, events, advertising, printed materials, or something else, your marketing needs to bring qualified leads to your door.
This could include a series of approaches, such as:
- Targeted PPC campaigns with specific optimised landing pages
- SEO-driven blogs and articles that address your customers’ specific pain points
- Email nurture sequences that help build customer relationships
- LinkedIn outreach and lead magnets that put you in front of key decision makers
We recently worked with Premier Washrooms who wanted to target opportunities in the corporate sector. For a modest budget we set up a PPC campaign, based on extensive keyword research and supported by a dedicated landing page and visuals. The company sent out over £1m worth of quotes as a result of the campaign.
Driving footfall
If you’re hosting or attending an event, such as a conference or expo, your desired outcome might be to drive footfall.
While this will also have the ultimate goal of generating leads, getting people there in the first place needs its own activity.
This could include:
- Email outreach to your existing contacts, pre and post event
- Targeted paid and organic socials on channels such as LinkedIn or Facebook, depending on the target audience and where they spend their online time
- Memorable visual materials, such as posters and videos
- Well-designed exhibition displays that draw people to your stand
We supported SaaS HR provider, HR Duo, on its attendance at the Festival of Work as part of its launch in the UK. Marketing activities began months before the event itself and included a series of blog posts on the key topics that would be discussed, social posts, a targeted LinkedIn campaign, securing a high-profile speaking slot, and careful design of the event stand, alongside promotional materials to hand out.
Afterwards, emails were sent to all new contacts, and a post event round-up blog was produced. This activity translated into some impressive results. You can see them in our event attendance case study.
Retaining existing customers
They are easily overlooked, but one of your best sources of leads is people who are, or have been, your customers. So it’s essential to keep an effective database or CRM system. You might want to market to this particular group with a referral programme, discount offer or stock sale.
Effective approaches include:
- An efficient database for collecting and storing contacts – previous, existing and prospective customers
- Email nurture sequences at appropriate points, such as thanking people for their custom, order updates and educational content about maximising product value
- Personalised outreach at strategic moments in the customer lifecycle
- Sending regular newsletters with interesting and informative information
We worked with manufacturer and supplier of medical models, Adam,Rouilly, to cleanse all its customer data and create a new GDPR-compliant newsletter. Once in place, this could be used to promote the sale of end-of-life stock to prospects, supported by a sales landing page and a blog highlighting the products on offer.
Brand awareness
While brand awareness is somewhat harder to measure in terms of a defined outcome, it’s the linchpin to all the above. It provides the foundation for all your other marketing activity, so that when people see your lead generator, or get a random invite to your event, they’ve either heard of you, or they are impressed with what they find when they do their independent research.
Improving your brand awareness might include:
- Defined key messages and brand values – being clear about what you do and what you stand for across all your communications
- A well-designed, user-friendly website regularly updated with relevant content
- Consistent value-driven social media presence
- Thought leadership content on digital channels and media to demonstrate authority
- An automatic system for gathering reviews, case studies and testimonials
Ensuring that your core messages and USPs – ie the problems you solve for your customers – are consistent across all your channels and customer touch points, will improve your brand awareness. Ultimately this will help pave the way for any other specific marketing activities or lead generating campaigns.
We worked as brand marketing partner for public sector procurement organisation, YPO, which wanted to evolve its brand identity and create a more consistent approach for its sub-brands. The project included developing a new visual identity, with more personality, and rolling it out across the business in multiple formats.
So if you ever find yourself wondering what the point of marketing is, it might be time to review your strategy and make sure you’re focused on the right activities.
And when time and resources are tight, it can be helpful to take it right back to basics. If you need any help with those basics, or an extra pair of hands for your stretched marketing team, give us a call or drop us an email.
We have been delivering effective marketing campaigns in partnership with businesses for over 20 years.