Why we’ve refreshed our brand

Our journey from a start-up to established agency has been filled with so many challenges and like any business that’s grown quickly, from a standing start it’s also been filled with a lot of change. Looking around at our team, our offices and our client base, it’s clear to see how far we’ve come as a business. But in the midst of all this change, there was one thing that had remained a constant; our brand.

We’ve actually had the same branding since our launch in March 2016. And there’s no doubt that our brand has served us well, especially in the early days when we were a small team and still building our culture and defining who we served as a business. But now feels like the right time for a change. We’re no longer a new business or a start-up but an established business with a strong track record in delivering for start-ups, SMEs and household names. To accurately convey the breadth and value of our services, the progression in our business journey and service offerings and compete with our esteemed competition, we need our brand to represent who we are today and show the value we deliver for businesses in all industries.

Introducing our new brand. Our brand now more accurately represents a more mature Air and shows how much we’ve grown since those early days. We’re now far more experienced and have valued long-term client relationships and amazing success stories that are a testament to the talents of our team. Our team represents a diverse blend of sales talent, and we wanted that to shine through in our brand refresh. It’s their hard work, dedication and commitment to delivering more for our clients that has driven our success and growth over the years.

Our brand has been developed from identifying our main archetype alongside 2 wing archetypes. A bit like a character in films and tv, ‘the hero, the villain, the lover’, an archetype aligns to certain business and brand characteristics. Our main archetype is The Hero, this archetype imbues the brand with strength and momentum, inspiring internal teams while also giving clients the confidence to trust in the process. Alongside this we one of our wing archetypes is The Magician, this archetype plays up the data, information, and skillset of Air, showing that with a little magic we can pull sales, leads or untapped markets out of ‘thin air’. And the final wing archetype is The Sage, this archetype shows strength in humility and demonstrates dependability, knowledge, insight, and support.

Then there are our services. We’ve grown from a telemarketing agency into a comprehensive outsourced sales and marketing solution, where we offer everything from demand generation and marketing support to complete end to end sales campaigns, SDR as a service and lead generation. Since 2018 we’ve worked with our Sister company, Roots to Market, to design multichannel campaigns that build brand, drive awareness and deliver opportunities to our clients.

We’ve chosen a brand refresh rather than a complete rebrand because we’re already established in the market and people recognise the name ‘Air’. It means a lot to us as a name and an identity and we’ve worked hard for that recognition.  There’s so much of the existing brand that we’re proud of and want to preserve as we start our next chapter.

Air Founder & CEO, Owen Richards, is excited to launch the new brand, “I can’t wait to share the refreshed look as it represents a step-change in how we communicate our services and more sophisticated and mature Air. You will see something new and different from us, as we launch our new website, which has a fresh and modern look and feel, conveys our breadth of expertise and tells fantastic client stories that show exactly how our brilliant team helps businesses achieve their sales ambitions”. Follow us on social media to stay up-to-date with the latest news and developments. If you’d like to hear more about our services and how we can help you accelerate your sales success going in 2021, get in touch today and we’ll guide you through the process: call 0333 250 3217 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

Looking for marketing inspiration during lockdown? Here’s our pick of the best resources to give you a fresh perspective in 2021

We’re all familiar with the hallmarks of lockdown life, it’s our third time around after all! And we also know, from our recent experience, that it’s tough to keep the momentum going and motivations high when the next day resembles the last. So where do you look for marketing inspiration at times like these? We’re not saying your daily walk or view from your kitchen window can’t be the source of great ideas, and nobody can argue with the merits of Tik Tok or your Instagram feed for some much-needed entertainment. But where can you find quality B2B content that really hits the mark?

We’ve curated this short guide to give you our pick of the best, just to get you started.

Free training and courses

Don’t be put off by the gratis nature of these valuable courses:

Google Digital Garage is helping people of all skill levels brush up on their digital marketing skills, absolutely free of charge. There’s 40 hours of learning available with accredited courses covering everything from online advertising to understanding your customers’ online behaviours, and helping you build your online presence. There’s content for everyone from total newbies, to seasoned marketing pros – it’sdefinitely worth a lunch hour browsing session.

For the sheer breadth of courses available, you cannot beat HubSpot Academy for both content and topic coverage. Their courses can help you build a winning social strategy, hone your content marketing skills and empower with the knowledge to execute your plan. Even if you’re not using their platform.

Global leader in the digital learning community, Udemy, have some gems available in their library of free content, courses that cover everything from entry-level programming to how to improve your day to day learning and creativity, there’s also some great personal development courses on creative leadership and agile thinking, if you want to shake up your approach to the day-to-day tasks.

The best of the rest

LinkedIn Learning and Facebook Blueprint have easy to consume, free content that can help you become a social media pro. So, if you’re looking to do more paid-for advertising, or simply want to extend your influence on their platforms, there’s plenty of resources to get you up and running.

Easy listening – marketing podcasts that will inform and inspire

Marketing over Coffee is a weekly podcast that covers the full marketing mix and even some throwbacks to classic campaigns, whether you’re interested in email marketing insights or you’re looking for copywriting tips, this podcast covers it all, including the latest thinking from academics. It’s also more interactive than the standard podcast as the hosts field listener questions and really get into topics.

Marketing Week (MW)an established and trusted voice in the marketing industry, MW’s podcast is exactly what you’d expect, engaging thought leadership from key marketing influencers. It’s a great way to keep up-to-date with the latest news and thinking, including insights from businesses on how they’ve pivoted their marketing strategies in the pandemic.

Salesforce: The Marketing Cloudcast – this weekly marketing and tech podcast delves into Account-Based Marketing and how to futureproof your team to create authentic customer ‘moments’ and experiences.

Not Another Marketing Podcast – a marketing and small business podcast that features big industry topics and interviews with leading digital marketing experts, this podcast is packed with practical advice on how to tackle marketing challenges as specific as ‘How to do personal branding on LinkedIn without shouting’, in an entertaining and candid style.

Resources and tools

The Chartered Institute of Marketing content hub is home to a wealth of articles, podcasts and webinars that challenge the boundaries of marketing ideologies and spark new ways of thinking, there’s plenty of macro thinking as well as quick reads that are useful for marketers in any industry.

HubSpot is a powerful marketing and sales automation tool, it’s also a CRM and can even be your CMS and social scheduler. If you’re looking for free marketing software that has everything you need to start managing your customer experience and building content all under one roof, it’s a great choice that grows symbiotically with your marketing plans. If you’re new to the world of marketing software, HubSpot’s knowledge base provides accessible guides for all common FAQs and some niche ones too.

Hotjar – if you’re looking for ways to improve your website user experience, or you’d like to see some more meaningful analytics on your visitors’ behaviour, Hotjar can offer some clues. You can view heat maps and recordings of sessions to give you a clear view of why users might not be engaging with your content.

This list is just a fraction of the great resources out there. If you’d like to talk more about how we can help you leverage these tools (and others) for success, or work with you to find inspiration for your marketing plans in 2021, get in touch today on 01392 796 702.

10 Key Ways to Optimise your Outbound Sales Engine

Outbound sales remain a vital component of a company’s sales strategy. Or at least it should be. Research conducted in 2019 highlighted that 41.2% of respondents found the humble telephone to be the most effective sales tool at their disposal. Outbound sales drove 55% of leads compared with 27% generated by inbound. That’s a pretty compelling statistic!

But can you supercharge your results further by changing some aspects of your approach, to close any gaps in your outbound sales strategy and delivery plan. With all elements working harmoniously you will see a surge in the quality and quantity of leads in your pipeline.

We’re experienced in helping our clients maximise their outbound sales strategy. In our experience, it takes an initial time-investment, expertise and consistent approach to get your outbound sales engine firing on all cylinders.

Here’s our rundown of the 10 key ways you can optimise outbound and how to bridge the gaps:

  1. Get your CRM working – Tough questions require honest answers: Is your CRM fit for purpose when it comes to being an outbound sales engine? Can your sales team work quickly but effectively with it? Does it lack the capability to deliver the data insights you need? This is a vital component in your outbound sales process, if your team find your CRM clunky and the UX poor they simply won’t use it. Without proper database management, it’s difficult to optimise campaigns and impossible to build a validated pipeline of valuable leads. This is why you need to get your CRM working for you, it’s the foundation of your campaign’s success.

    Many of our clients utilise our custom built CRM which has been specifically developed to optimise our outbound sales engine. We do also work within our clients CRMs when relevant, providing we can see that the platform will give clients a clear view of their data, their prospects and the entire journey throughout the life of a campaign.

  2. Reporting – Do you have access to the reports and insights you need to optimise outbound sales? Reporting should give you as close to a real-time view of a campaign as possible. It should help you quickly pinpoint what’s working and what needs to change. If you’re not in a position to do that, how do you know if your campaign is going well? When using our bespoke CRM, we provide detailed reporting to our clients through our client portal so they can get a speedy pulse-check and a transparent view of progress. Our ongoing reporting uses those insights to adapt and evolve our approach to achieve success.

  3. Call recordings – These provide a vital insight into how customer conversations are progressing, whether messaging is working or needs review. Do you have access to recordings? If you have, do you have the time to listen to them and do you know what to listen for? Listening back to calls is vital in any campaign, it helps you get a sense of a typical conversations, how prospects are engaging with your messaging and whether or not you need to change your script or approach. We have a thorough review and feedback process to ensure consistent improvement. You’ll never get a lead that the call hasn’t been listened to by one of our team first.

  4. Call backs – Having an agreed process for how calls are handled and logged ensures that you are efficient with opportunities and your prospect is getting a smooth experience. You need complete visibility of the most recent point of contact to create a seamless journey to sale. It’s worth the time investment of mapping this process out thoroughly and sharing with your team. This comes back to your CRM, does this have the functionality to seamlessly manage this?

  5. Data tells a story – We use it to find patterns that we can leverage for success, the best of time of day to call, the most successful approach to take with gatekeepers to reach the decision maker expediently plus many more trends can be found from the data. We work with our clients to build that picture and use it to best effect. Again, this is a worthy time investment that will really pay off in the long-term. Ideally, you will have an individual within your team who is able to analyse, process and make recommendations based on the data presented. We know that not every in-house team can have an individual focused on data but making it a priority for your campaign means somebody needs to understand and own this. We have a Data Analyst within our team who is solely focused on optimising client campaigns by utilising data.

  6. Learning and Development – Continual training and support helps sales teams realise their potential and is proven to enhance performance. Do you have a training plan for your sales team? Do you have the tools or partners who will really add value to this training? Research shows that learning and development can really boost sales team performance, with sales training improving win-rate by 15.4%. This is a huge focus for our team, we invest in our sales teams, championing their professional development and supporting them to learn and grow and deliver stellar work across all client accounts.

  7. QA (Quality Assurance) matters – A quality prospect experience, smooths the path to conversions. By optimising your QA processes you’re ensuring a better experience for every future prospect, protecting your brand and building insights to optimise future conversations and future campaigns. We work closely with clients to assure quality of all sales conversation and follow-up process. We ensure their brand is represented in line with their tone and values and their outbound campaigns actively build brand and reputation in new markets.

  8. Scripts that help conversation flow – In our experience, scripts need to rigid enough to effectively communicate the brand and pitch but not so rigid that they stem the flow conversation. Try to be professional but conversational in tone, if you wouldn’t naturally talk a certain way, don’t put it in your script. Prospects are people and will respond far better to a thought-provoking and engaging chat than a list of quick-fire discovery questions. We create scripts for our clients that communicate their brand and service and build the relationships that lead to future opportunities.

  9. Objection handling – How you handle objections is a valuable brand building activity. Doing it well takes training and experience. If you’ve never tackled it before, try to map out some common challenges and listen to calls to find specific ones; then work on your responses and agree your approach so everyone in your sales team is on the same page. For us, it’s woven into our FAQs and provides another opportunity to progress a conversation towards a sale.

  10. Competitor analysis – We’re keen advocates of competitor analysis because by looking at what your competitors do well, helps you contextualize your own value proposition, strengths and weaknesses. When refining and honing your messages to the market, this information is absolute gold. Getting started doesn’t have to be onerous, take a couple of hours to start putting together your insights, even something high-level can prove a useful document, but make sure you use it to inform your campaign strategy. If you’re not sure where to take it next, we can help. We use our clients’ insights from competitor analysis to develop a strategy that accelerates their success and helps them differentiate themselves in a crowded market.

Developing and honing your outbound sales approach is no easy feat and when you’re busy with the daily running of your business. It can be tough to find the time, headspace and the right group of people in-house to make sure your efforts are coordinated, consistent and optimised for results. This is where we can help you bridge the gap. We’re experts in outsourced sales, helping startups to household names to achieve their sales goals and reach new markets.

If you want to supercharge your outbound strategy and accelerate your sales success going into 2021, get in touch today and we’ll guide you through the process: call 0333 250 3217 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

Unlocking the power of Account Based Marketing (ABM). Could it be right for your business?

Awareness around Account Based Marketing (ABM) has boomed in recent years, but it’s been around since the early 2000s. For resultsdriven marketers, ABM is a dream opportunity to drive enviable ROI, with research showing it easily outstrips other approaches: 97% of marketers surveyed agreed ABM had higher ROI than other marketing activities. 

That’s greatbut what is it? 

Account Based Marketing is a strategic marketing approach whersales and marketing work closely together to target potential high growth and key accounts, either customer or prospect, with tailored messaging focused on their specific challenges. ABM campaigns include targeting individual decision makers within the selected accounts with messaging relevant to their operational challenges. 

With demand generation, the focus is on creating awareness to a larger market and then moving those interested parties through a marketing funnel until they’re ready to make a decisionWhereas ABM efforts focus on a smaller number of key target accounts and operate on the basis of winning high value opportunities, making the initial intensive efforts and investment worthwhile.

(Image: B2BMarketing.net)

There are many clear benefits to developing an ABM programme, including: 

Gives you more focus

Rather than a broad-brush approach, ABM encourages you to focus on those who really need and want your product or serviceBy tailoring the message directly to key decision makers, you’re effectively bypassing the usual awareness building approach and the reward is far greater. 

A higher hit-rate

This is a real opportunity to use highly personalised creative and messaging that cuts through the noise and directly responds to a specific company or department challenge, rather than a broader industry one. This direct response is engaging and rapidly builds trust and rapport, opening the door for a meaningful conversation, and as we’ve already mentioned yields far stronger ROI. 

True collaboration between sales and marketing

ABM requires sales and marketing to work together as a team, using all resources in a focused and efficient way. This means sales teams feel far more supported in their efforts and marketers feel much more engaged with the sales followup process. 

Getting started with ABM 

Now we’re not saying chuck out the marketing mix and put all your eggs in the ABM basket. For some business models, it’s not the right approach (we’ll touch on this later).  But if you’d like to give it a try there are some straightforward ways to get started. 

It’s vital that you set out what you hope to achieve from ABM at the outset of your campaign. Your goals may grow and change over time, but you do need to be clear on what would be a successful resultRemember to be realistic with your goals too, ABM is often a long-term strategy, so don’t expect to see results immediately. 

Do you have the team to execute in-house? It’s vital that you commit the time and the resources to an ABM campaign, if you can’t afford to do this in-house, would you consider outsourcing? 

Run a workshop between marketing and sales where you work out which clients or prospects would be prime for an ABM approach. Decide here if you wish to spread the risk and opt for a one-to-many approach, rather than a one-to-one. 

Now you need to choose your delivery model and start shaping your campaign. Measurement is vital so make sure you have the tools to track your efforts in place. If you’re using a marketing automation tool, ensure your contact data is up to snuff and you’ve mapped your accounts properly. Getting your house in order is crucial before embarking on a detailed and coordinated campaign. 

When ABM might not be right 

While ABM is a tried and tested marketing approach, there are circumstances when it might not be right for you: 

  • You don’t have a clearly defined audience and cannot easily isolate highvalue potential customers – without this knowledge, it’s difficult to get your ABM programme off the ground. 
  • You don’t have the insight to map accounts and create tailored messaging – which is essential for ABM success. 
  • Your sales are largely online rather than led by the sales team – so the sales enablement aspects of your campaign and tailored messaging wouldn’t add value. 
  • Your deal sizes are smaller, and you’d rather sell volume – ABM works on the idea of going deep with select accounts, if your business model is lower transactional value, high volume sales, there are better ways to market your offer (we can help you with those methods too). 

Using ABM to break into new markets 

We are currently working with a French technology company seeking to break into the UK, Nordic and Canadian markets. Our client can define their target market as large businesses processing big data, so it makes sense to target the C-Suite of large household brands. To capture the attention of their desired decision maker, they need to stand out, differentiate themselves effectively and offer maximum value. Their product and their buyer are perfect for an ABM campaign. 

We are validating our client’s target market data, undertaking additional research to build insights that will enhance their campaign and capture and nurture their target decisionmakers. 

Does Account Based Marketing sound like a strategy that could be relevant for your business? If you’d like to find out more about how ABM could work for you, we’d love to help you get started. Get in touch today on 01392 796 702.

Our top tips for creating your 2021 SME business marketing plan

Create your 2021 SME business marketing plan

A year ago, as people sat down to write out their predictions for marketing trends in 2020, nobody could have predicted global shifts in remote working that have changed the way that all businesses connect with their audiencesSMEs have certainly been affected by the pandemic – McKinsey research showing that 80% of UK SMEs have seen a revenue impact from the Covid-19 crisis. This makes an investment in marketing strategy even more vital for SMEs, with a focus on bringing in new customers and reaching new audiences. 

Looking ahead

We can look to the future with hope and research suggests many SMEs are doing just that. A Veem report showed that 53% of small business owners actually expected to see uptake in their business in 2021This is a really encouraging sentiment that demonstrates that for many SMEs, the opportunities that existed before the pandemic still exist. It’s just having a plan to navigate the barriers. That’s where we can help. We’re experts in helping SMEs define and connect with their target market and helping them grow. 

Here’s our 5 top tips for shaping a pandemic-proof marketing plan that’ll help your business fly in 2021: 

1. Digital is the new normalget your house in order

Digital experiences have much higher value than they did pre-pandemic. This means your website and your social media presence needs to be on point, on message and showcasing the benefits of your products and services. User experience remains very important – your call to action and customer journey needs to be clear. Make it easy for customers to get in touch with you online and offer an experience that is as seamless and enjoyable as possible so they stay with you for the whole journey. 

2. Develop a content strategy 

If getting your online presence updated is the equivalent of cleaning a house, then an apt analogy for developing your content strategy would be all the valuables inside. Your content strategy is your plan to communicate what your customers need to know and would find useful in ways they’ll enjoy consuming. 

For example, a blog is a meaningful way to combine product benefits with industry insights and will help drive organic traffic through to your site. If your customers enjoy reading your blog, they’ll share it. If it genuinely resonates with their challenges, they will visit your site. You can publish it in more than one channel and adapt messaging and themes for your social content. 

3. Up your social game

This neatly brings us on to social media. It’s more vital than ever that small businesses are active and engaged on social platforms. This means engaging on your page and demonstrating that you can solve a customer’s problem and care about their experience. It’s a shift from transactional selling to a relationship based one but it’s a valuable differentiation to make and one that will ensure greater customer loyalty and advocacy in the long-term. We can help you develop targeted social campaigns and shape messaging that will resonate with your customers on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. 

4. Authentic and socially conscious

Influencer marketing is set to continue growing in 2021 but don’t worry if you haven’t got an A-list budget, some of the best performing posts on social come from users and advocates. 2020 has seen a shift towards heightened value on meaningful digital experiences, increased authenticity and higher engagement with socially conscious brands. This is a natural reflection of the times we live in, so don’t be afraid to stand for something. If being a brand activist isn’t for you, that’s okay, just work on communicating with your customers in an honest and straightforward way and if you can get them to sing your praises on social, it will resonate with your desired audience.

5. Boldly uncover new opportunities

In tough times it’s tempting to play it safe and refrain from starting something new; the catch 22 is that new activity is exactly what will guarantee a healthy supply of new customers in 2021. If your inbound enquiries have dropped off, we can work with you to create demand generation campaigns that will build and nurture your key prospects and relationships and convert them into engaged customers. We use all of the aforementioned tactics and mediums plus more to deliver relevant content and messaging to your target audience and produce marketing qualified leads (MQLs) for your sales team to follow up. 

If you’d like to talk more about how we can help you create a marketing strategy that will ensure your business grows and thrive in 2021, get in touch today on 01392 796 702. 

Why it’s never too early for SaaS businesses to invest in their sales strategy

All hype and a lackluster product are a common phenomenon. We’ve all been seduced by a miracle product that promises so much but underwhelms. But what about the flipside? What happens when you spend all your time focused on technology development and neglect to think of the future sales? It’s tempting to believe that a truly fantastic product will sell itself. Sadly, this is a modern fable of the highest order. Every major new tech development of the past 10 years has been backed by a sound sales and marketing strategy because nothing drives new product investment better than a solid first year’s sales figures.

In the SaaS industry, success is largely predicated on those early sales, as an estimated 92% of SaaS companies fail within 3 years. Despite growth and funding, securing pipeline and a stronghold in the market is even more vital.

It’s a tough situation because it’s natural for entrepreneurs to hold back on marketing and sales plans when they feel their product requires further development but it’s also this lack of planning beyond the initial investment that can prove a seriously limiting factor.

So, if you’ve secured investment, found a perfect product market fit and are confident in your value proposition and pricing, you’re way ahead of most of your competitors. But in a high growth and extremely saturated market, that’s not enough to edge the competition. Beige, generic and all-encompassing messaging that doesn’t help your product stand-out, coupled with a less than expert sales approach, isn’t the winning combination that will help you succeed.

Define your market and nurture it

It’s true, there’s a global market out there if you’re an SaaS business, and even if you’ve validated the market need for your product with extensive research, you still need to have a consistent, defined approach to influencing the decision makers in the businesses who have the most need for what you’re selling. Even if you have the perfect product to solve their business challenge, if your sales strategy and approach to prospecting doesn’t include a thorough discovery process, you could be missing out on valuable prospects and upsell opportunities. Our team are experts in guiding and influencing these conversations, gathering valuable insight throughout their conversations.

Invest in lead generation

If you’re new to the market and your organic traffic and enquiries need a boost, investing in lead generation can not only directly feed your pipeline but drive valuable traffic to your website, and can help you build brand and reputation when you’re still trying to expand your reach.

Stop firefighting and trust a sales expert

We’ve covered the issue of allocating a budget to outsourcing sales in our blog How to decide what to spend your investment on. A big part of this is understanding that the right team is essential to success. When you’re just starting to get established, it’s frustrating for team members to lead functions where they have limited expertise. You can be a genius developer with a talent for securing investment but that doesn’t mean you know how to create a winning sales strategy, tailor conversations that convince decision makers to part with their cash or seamlessly adjust the script to keep a prospect warm and interested. That’s what our team can do for you, giving you back valuable time to focus on core business.

The Covid-19 effect

The pandemic has seen SaaS sales rise, thanks to increased digitisation of services expedited by the shift to remote work. Who knows how long the boom will last? What we do know is that when budgets tighten, SaaS services will have to prove their mettle and stay close to both customers and prospects to keep churn low and convince new customers to part with their cash, making a consistent approach to account managing existing customers and nurturing new relationships even more vital.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you create a winning sales approach that will ensure a strong pipeline as the market recovers, get in touch: call 0345 241 3038 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

The Power of Multichannel and How to Use it For Success

Imagine if you could only rely on one method to communicate the benefits of your product or service. Think of how you would need to simultaneously build brand recognition, demonstrate the benefits of your product, and consistently engage with the customer using that same method of communication whether they were ready to buy or not. Think about your preferred brands – imagine if everything you had learned about them had been as a result of a one-off radio awareness campaign aired over two weeks. Would they still be your preferred option? Would you feel the same investment in that brand if you hadn’t been furnished with tailored product knowledge to influence your buying decisions? Or received an email with an irresistible offer, followed by a social post that made you smile? The answer is, probably not. Multichannel campaigns are arguably your prospect’s preferred choice. Research shows 67% of B2B buyers tend to research content before making a purchase and 64% of B2B buyers will read two to five content pieces before making a decision to purchase.

Creating awareness and maximizing exposure

Multichannel selling is the second approach. It’s promoting and selling your products on more than one sales channel, taking an integrated approach that allows you to increase your prospective customer’s exposure to your product through telemarketing campaigns, digital campaigns, social selling, video prospecting and content sharing. It’s more than reaching out to prospects through traditional methods of communication – it’s generating awareness in the online communities they already use and meeting them where they already are. It’s a smart way to build brand and reputation, communicate a product or service’s benefits and drive interest and enquiries.

A blended and personalised approach

Our team are experienced in designing sales and marketing campaigns that carefully consider all the variables at play. When working with senior c-suite decision makers, or targeting large enterprises with complex organisational structures, our team know that a transactional approach isn’t the most effective. Instead, they create selling sequences of personalised activity that deliver valuable messaging designed to subtly influence and place the service benefits at the front of the prospect’s mind. When our sales specialists follow up with a phone call, they know some of the valuable product benefits and brand credibility have already been seeded. This is particularly valuable for our clients with high value products, which may have longer than usual sales cycles, meaning a longer-term nurture approach is required to keep their prospects engaged – and this has to extend beyond a single campaign.

Why we’re different

Here at Air, we have the in-house skills, technology and processes to execute multi-channel campaigns. As a specialist end-to-end sales agency, we don’t believe in a templated, cookie-cutter approach. For us, no two campaigns are the same. That’s why we’ll work closely with you to understand your sales goals, your target market’s challenges and their customer’s pain points so you can tailor your campaigns and messaging to cut through the noise and strongly resonate with key decision makers in your desired market.

With Air, you can be assured that we’ll design and deliver a multi-channel approach that helps you deepen your brand recognition and increase your customer touch points, in a meaningful way, so that your combined sales and marketing efforts have the maximum impact and reach without creating arduous processes or unnecessary workload for your internal team.

If you would like to know more about how we can help you discover new markets, land high value accounts and improve brand recognition through a multi-channel approach, get in touch here or call us on 0345 241 3038.

From Start-ups to Enterprises: Why Outsourced Sales can work for businesses of all sizes

One of the questions we get asked a lot is, ‘is outsourced sales right for my business, we’re just starting out?’ On the flip side, we field similar questions from enterprises with established sales team, ‘should I invest in an outsourced sales team, will I see more value than the team we currently have in place?’

The reality is that outsourced sales can work for businesses of all sizes. We’ve had success working with micro businesses and large enterprise clients, it all comes down to tailoring the approach to make it successful for that individual business. Provided the approach is executed well and based on close analysis of an organisation’s desired objectives, their target market and existing sales strategy (if they have one), we’re confident that all businesses can derive genuine value from outsourced sales.

The benefits of outsourced sales for Start-ups

The single biggest benefit of outsourced sales for Start-ups is having a dedicated expert focused on bringing in new business, especially at a time when everyone’s primary focus is getting the business up and running. In most new businesses, the founder is already wearing many different hats, from Finance Director to Head of Sales, and has little opportunity to focus solely on building the pipeline their business will need to succeed and survive.

What we can do especially well for a start-up business, is quickly ramp up their sales expertise and start building pipeline. This gives them back time to focus on the operational elements of their business, growing and retaining their existing client base or even securing investment; safe in the knowledge they are building their brand and reputation whilst generating leads that could convert into valuable sales over the coming months. This is especially pertinent in the current climate, research shows 74% of start-ups have experienced decline in revenue since the start of the pandemic, with the same number (74%) being forced to lay off full-time employees, making them even more resource constrained.

The benefits for established businesses

But the benefits of outsourced sales is not just for start-up’s, enterprise clients can equally benefit from this model. Onboarding new sales talent is often costly and time-consuming and it takes time for new starters to reach optimum productivity.  Compared to outsourcing to an expert, where you can immediately access proven sales resource that can be easily scaled as and when required. Another benefit often found for enterprise businesses is being able to assign a sales specialists to specific campaigns that you have running.  This allows your internal team to stay focused on their pipeline and prospects whilst your outsourced team manage the specific campaign activity – allowing you to keep on top of all sales activity.

Another benefit of your internal team working alongside an outsourced sales team is the opportunity it presents to benchmark your sales team and review sales processes to make improved efficiencies. Many enterprise businesses will have had established sales teams and sales processes for a long time and whilst some are still working perfectly, others could be improved. In these scenarios clients are looking for benchmarks to understand what an external experienced team can achieve vs their internal team and to understand what processes they could change to become more successful.

The Air approach

We deliver a unique experience for every client who works with us, regardless of their size, product or industry. We get to know our client’s business, their strategy, their goals, their market and especially their nuances! From here, we build a bespoke strategy that reflects all the above, considering their product value and sales cycle. We then create a plan that includes campaign content and messaging aligned to their brand, we train and immerse our team in the campaign’s goals and work with the client to clearly define the target market. Our process has been carefully designed to reassure our clients that we’re listening to their needs and committed to delivering a campaign that exceeds their expectations.

Could you benefit from using an experienced outsourced sales team? Whether you’re just starting out or need additional sales support for your existing team, get in touch, call 0333 250 3217 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk

How SaaS companies are reaping the benefits of outsourcing their Sales Development Representative (SDR) roles – now’s the time to take the leap

In the SaaS market, outbound sales are crucial to scale and grow at the rate needed to remain competitive and deliver that initial return on investment necessary not only to validate their product but to ensure their company’s future.

While an annual growth rate of 20% is a healthy benchmark for businesses in other industries, software companies growing at that rate have a 92% chance of failure in just a few years according to McKinsey & Company. Further cementing the pressure to succeed for tech businesses in those crucial early months.

For most, their product has spent many months in development, they’re confident in their value proposition, their market research and their messaging. With this level of pressure to make it succeed, there is no doubt going to be a level of nervousness in handing over the reins to an outsourced partner to support taking that product to market.

But there are clear and well-documented benefits to outsourcing sales, especially for a high growth model like SaaS. Developing a high-performance sales process takes time and expertise. For companies looking to fast track growth and build pipeline, they may not have months to build a sales culture primed for success. In fact, building an SDR function in-house comes with many challenges; you need to recruit the right people, retain the best performers and spend time training and managing those who don’t come up to the mark.

Fast growth means high churn

Research shows the turnover rates average at 39% for players in the high growth SaaS market, with contributing factors including burnout, poaching from more recognised brands with established career pathways and simply the nature of working in a fast-paced environment. If you consider average ramp-up time is just over 3 months for most SDRs, it becomes clear why it makes sense to work with a partner who specialises in recruiting and retaining talented SDRs. A related benefit of outsourcing is protecting the in-house sales talent tech businesses need to retain, by allowing them to focus on closing deals rather than spreading themselves thinly across prospecting and short-term promotions.

Building a sales culture for success takes time

A successful sales culture is reliant on great team relationships, a comprehensive onboarding and training programme and the right mix of employee benefits and incentives. At Air, we’re proud of our culture and the journey our SDRs have taken from new recruits to experienced individuals with enviable track records. But it didn’t happen overnight, our people have honed their experience through working on diverse and complex campaigns and growing in confidence and experience with each client collaboration. This means they can hit the ground running with new campaigns and are already familiar with the challenges across a range of SaaS clients, so can leverage their experience and insight into industry challenges to build rapport with key decision makers. For more insight on this topic, watch our vlog where we explore the challenges of Growing a team of Sales Development Representatives.

Air’s outsourced model

We help our SaaS clients fast track to success with Air’s outsourced SDR model, removing the burden of developing their in-house sales specialism and giving them back time to focus on their operations, service and product development. If you are a SaaS business looking for support, we can help.

Scale your outreach

We believe that there’s nothing more effective in a sales process than a good, human to human conversation. Our expert team of SDRs will scale your reach, increasing your brand awareness and potential sales opportunities.

Build your pipeline

A healthy sales pipeline of qualified leads that will convert is vital to your plans to scale. Our team of highly skilled SDRs effectively engage with your ideal target audience, to give you the best chance of making a sale.

Convert prospects

We’ll work with you to increase revenue from new sales. Our talented Sales Development team will not only create pipeline but cover the full sales cycle.

To discover more about how we work with SaaS businesses and the results we achieve check out our case studies. If you’d like to start a conversation about how we could work together to help your business grow, call 0333 250 3217 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

What It Means to You, to Work With a HubSpot Solutions Partner Marketing Agency

Air Marketing are an official HubSpot Solutions Partner. Our team are very proud of this because for an ambitious agency looking to grow, we love the idea of being affiliated with such a huge, successful brand. 

But – what’s the benefit of this affiliation to our prospects and clients? Because ultimately, they are more important than just a great title. 

We completely agree, we are not the sort of agency that runs after fluffy titles and affiliations just to make us sound good. In fact, that is the exact thing that we advise our clients not to do, so we certainly wouldn’t be doing it ourselves. As part of our partnership discussions with HubSpot, we did a lot of our own exploration to fully understand what this partnership means for our prospects and client base. 

So, what does it mean? 

The biggest and most obvious benefit is accessing HubSpot. There are many, many different CRM systems available on the market but there are very few at sensible price points for B2B businesses that allow marketing, sales, service, and IT teams to collaborate, removing friction from the buyer’s journey. HubSpot use inbound as a methodology for growing your organisation. It’s based on building meaningful, lasting relationships with your prospects and customers through valuable content and experiences. It’s also about valuing and empowering these people to reach their goals at any stage in their journey with you. 

Alongside this inbound methodology, the other big benefit is having all touchpoints under one roof creating ‘one version of the truth’. By this we mean that many businesses fall into a similar situation where – sales use the CRM (when they remember), marketing are working from that CRM but also from an emailing platform, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google AdWords, WordPress etc and service or Account Managers are using spreadsheets or another separate system to manage clients/customers.  

This structure means that data is stored in many different platforms so you may not see a clear picture of your prospects or clients/customers – not being able to see a clear picture means you’re restricted in making overall decisions on customer journey, touchpoints and marketing success because your data points are not joined up. Whereas, getting all this data within one platform opens up huge opportunities to understand more about your customer journey, your marketing and sales touchpoints and the ability to pull reports on this data to better understand and compare it.

Lead generation with HubSpotImage courtesy of HubSpot. 

As HubSpot Partners we are constantly understanding more efficient and effective ways to manage your marketing within this platform. This means that we are focused on crafting programmes of marketing activity which is entirely focused on delivering results aligned to your objectives. Utilising the HubSpot platform to deliver, optimise and transparently report on this activity. This is something that we have been passionate about since inception but partnering with a piece of technology that enables us to achieve this more efficiently is of huge benefit to our prospects and clients. 

Do you have to use HubSpot to work with us? 

In short the answer is no. We are always open to working with clients who use other CRM systems or are launching themselves so have CRM in place. But it will always be our recommendation to have a system, like HubSpot, that allows all your data to be kept in one place to make our marketing efforts and your marketing investment more efficient to deliver success. 

If you are looking for guidance on your marketing strategy or activity, or you’d like to discuss HubSpot as a CRM or lead generation tool your business, get in touch to find out more. Call us on: 0345 241 3038, or send a message to our CRM Manager, Shaun Weston, on LinkedIn.