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Time management is vital to business – how can you better yours?

Posted on by Doug Roots

We’ve all had those days where we come into work and just don’t feel up to the day; tasks have been stacking up for days, deadlines have been pushed back and our workload just seems to be taking over our lives. And on days like these we often don’t help ourselves. Instead of tackling the more pressing tasks, we chose to do admin and smaller jobs which don’t take up as much of our time. Of course, this doesn’t solve the issue and we continue to get increasingly behind on our work and become even more stressed, leading to poor mental health – 1 in 6.8 people experience mental health problems in the workplace.

I know it’s sometimes easier said than done but in business we just need to grab the bull by the horns and take on the tasks that we don’t always feel up to – only 37% of teams in the UK report completing their project on time. An easy way to balance our workload is to simply invest proper time management. By effectively managing our time we reduce stress and increase productivity.

 

My top tips for time management:

Wind down and plan

Allowing yourself 15 minutes at the end of your day to wind the day down and go over the tasks which need focusing on the following day will allow you to create a structure to follow when you get in.

Book it in

Use your calendar – it’s right there to remind you to do what you need to do! By booking tasks into your calendar you will basically have a virtual PA which nudges you when it’s time to wrap up a task and move on to the next.

Eliminate distractions

Put your phone back in your bag (on silent), pop in your headphones and turn off anything that will distract you. This includes team chat notifications and emails, sometimes you just need to cut yourself off and work for an hour.

Colour code it

Sit down and work out which jobs are high priority and which jobs can be left for a while – then flag them with a colour code, ranking them in order of importance.

Training

Make the most of training opportunities available to you. Sometimes sitting down with your team and/or a trainer and discussing various techniques which other people implement is a great way of making your day, and the business, run more smoothly.

 

My favourite Time Management concepts:

Follow The Pareto Principle

I am a strong believer in this time management concept – it’s tried and tested, based on the work of the Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, in 1906.

To put it simply, 8/10 tasks on your daily to do list are as important as your top 2.

So, take your daily to do list and write down 10 things that you want to achieve today. Of these 10, select the 2 that are most important. Make these your priority. Work towards these throughout the day, resisting the urge to procrastinate and take up smaller tasks.

In working towards your 2 most important tasks, you know that the key tasks can be crossed off and time can be given to the smaller tasks when you have the capacity to fulfil them.

Implement The Eisenhower Matrix

This concept was born from Dwight Eisenhower’s famous quote, “what is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important”, and again it’s pretty straight forward.

The basic premise is that some tasks are simply more important to a business than others. Often it pays to be able to delegate, if you have an assistant (or a colleague with a lighter work load) then hand it over and save yourself the time to work on your more important tasks.

 

There really is nothing worse than coming to work and feeling like you can’t face the day. So, if you’re feeling a little snowed under, why not implement these hints and tips?

 

Opinion Piece by Nicolette Karides, Learning and Development Coordinator, Air Marketing Group

 

 

It Wasn’t Always a Piece of Cake – The History of Telemarketing

Posted on by Doug Roots

When we think about telemarketing and telesales our minds predominantly envisage a masculine environment where characters from Wolf of Wall Street relish in their ego fuelled boiler rooms. Aggressive cold-calling practices, fraudsters, scam artists and relentless robocalls have made our history stand out. However, the industry started very differently and has overtime grown into one of the most transparent and profitable means of marketing used by sales professionals today.

Once upon a time, there were no high-powered men to see here!

Despite the stereotype that’s been created for us, telemarketing came from humble beginnings and was first achieved by a group of women. The women, who were originally housewives, came together with a shared interest in baking and a desire to make their own money.

At this stage no one was a ‘professional’, but not so dissimilar from today, the ladies trialled different conversation techniques to sell.

Overall, this approach proved a success and the women continued to bake, using telemarketing techniques to make connections and build their fortunes.

Thanks to the worlds love of baking, telemarketing was born, and success tasted sweet to those who began utilising it!

In the 1900’s the first ‘lead list’ promoted more ‘quantity’ over ‘quality’

Today marketeers understand the importance of gathering quality data which is going to produce a return on investment for their clients. In the early 1900’s, when the Multi-Mailing Co. started compiling and selling lists from local phone directories, its first ‘lead list’ consisted of 600,000 numbers which spread across multiple cities. At that time, the newly developed telephone system gave the callers access to richer members of the community. These people were considered ‘quality’ prospects, this was mainly due to their worth, regardless of their need or interest in making an investment.

In 1957 the first telemarketing firm dialled out

The first call centre, DialAmerica, began operating with only two calling stations, one inbound station and one outbound station, resembling something similar to traditional telemarketing.

For them, success came in the booming post-war economy. Today, DialAmerica is one of the largest operating call centres globally, making a 100 million calls a year and on average delivering 100,000 phone hours a week.

The switchboard 60’s

In the 1960’s Private Manual Branch Exchanges (PMBX) were invented. These giant switchboards were operated by receptionists who manually connected calls to the correct extension.

The switchboards were used by companies to bring communications in-house and save money rather than outsourcing to third-parties.

At this time the industry was still heavily populated by women, thought to be due to their warm approach, likable nature and cheaper wage.

The 1960’s also introduced the Bell Telephone, a computer system which could dial numbers using tones instead of a rotary dial. It was this invention which paved the road to Interactive Voice Response (IVR), the automated service that was about to fuel the rage of a nation.

The 1970’s and the year of the robot

During the early 1970’s telemarketing began enjoying mainstream success, however even the most experienced sellers were only dialling an average of 100 numbers a day, in comparison to today’s average of 200 plus.

With the growth of sophisticated technologies, the need for operators to manually transfer calls was eliminated. IVR was deployed and the automated service was taking off, despite its complications, expenses and limited computer vocabulary which started to trigger the public’s distaste for telemarketing.

Telemarketing, as it has come to be known, began in the 80’s

In 1981, total business expenditures for telemarketing exceeded the spend on direct-mail advertising for the first time.

In this decade several trends continued to contribute to the growth of telemarketing. These included:

  • High cost personal sales calls, making telemarketing more attractive in this show off B2B era
  • Advances in telecommunications, computers and database management, decreasing costs and increased efficiency
  • Consumer acceptance of 0800 numbers
  • The growing success of inbound and outbound telemarketing campaigns which encouraged more companies to try the phone as a sales tool

Scam artists in the shape of sales agents

Despite the industries progress, by the late 1990’s it looked like the end was near for outbound telemarketing. Annual fraud costs exploded, prompting the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission and Watchdog organisations to strengthen regulations to protect customers.

The DMA telephone name removal list grew from 900,000 to 2.5 million names in less than a year and by 2000, the number had increased to 3.2 million.

In 2003, the National Do Not Call Registry was launched by the Federal Trade Commission and had more than 50 million phone numbers registered before the start date.

A time of transparency and professionalism

An industry once deemed annoying to those it came into contact with has turned itself around, with business managers now agreeing B2B telesales calls are the least annoying form of advertising.

Today, the telemarketing industry is more transparent than ever before. In the EU, new GDPR regulations monitor the way personal data is held, used and shared, whilst the Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS) gives corporate subscribers the right to be added to the Central Opt-Out Register. This means they have the right to choose not to receive unsolicited sales and marketing telephone calls to all their organisation’s telephone numbers, or to selected numbers.

The industry revolves around being personable and a telemarketer’s ability to build strong, honest relationships.  Scripts are used to help remind sellers of USPs but also that there’s no room for sales robots in this industry. Every sales agent must have initiative to get past the gatekeeper, identify pain points and deliver personal conversations that position them as the expert in each individual client’s product / service.

Telemarketing is an extremely lucrative industry which requires a lot of skill if your agency wants to match the industries average return of £11 for every £1 a client invests, at Air we proudly return £18 for every £1 spent.

To find out more about the campaigns Air Marketing run and the companies we help, contact us on 0345 241 3038 or contact@air-marketing.co.uk

Integration is a current buzzword, but what does it actually mean for your sales and marketing team?

Posted on by Doug Roots

Sales and marketing both share a common goal – revenue. Yet, often there is a whole host of squabbling that goes on between the two in order to find a way to bring revenue in. This is an age old rivalry, a misalignment that costs B2B companies 10% or more of revenue per year.

Once sales and marketing teams have decided on an idea to run with, they often quickly unravel. 60-70% of B2B content created is never used, often because the marketing team lack the intimate buyer knowledge that sales teams are party too. Even more frustratingly, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales because they aren’t passed on at all, they aren’t properly followed up or the leads aren’t validated before being sent across.

It’s seemingly obvious then that it is about time that Sales and Marketing teams joined together in a merry dance of integration – businesses with aligned sales and marketing teams achieve 207% higher revenue compared to those which are disjointed and out of touch.

The solution:

  1. Make sure that your sales and marketing teams are working together

For every client, both sides should be able to offer their expert advice as each can bring different skills to the table. Your sales team will often have personable skills, giving them the upper hand when it comes to actually closing leads. However, your marketing team are there to entice those leads in to begin with, using targeted marketing based on their in-depth market research. It is important that teams are on the same page and share an awareness of the client’s needs.

  1. Be transparent

Make sure that each team has access to, or a clear awareness of all that will be happening during a client’s campaign. Have your marketing team share social plans or ask the sales team to proof read blog posts, for example – they may have suggestions on how to keep clients interested during the nurturing process. And vice versa, share call scripts with your marketeers, they may be able to offer more engaging conversation suggestions.

  1. Evaluate results together

Learn from what each team has done well and what you can collectively improve on. Using data from past campaigns will allow you to best assess this. If a referral scheme didn’t work on a previous campaign, why was this and is it a good idea to use it on a similar one in the future or should both teams look at alternative messaging or ways in which the referral scheme is presented? At the end of the day, both teams are here to make money, so each team should have input on how best to do it.

  1. Get to know each other

It sounds almost too easy but how can a team be successful and integrated if none of them know anything about the other? In talking, each team will find out how the other works and who is best to go to for certain tasks. If you allow your teams the opportunity to share common ground and build working relationships and friendships, they are more likely to be motivated and produce work of a high quality.

At Air Marketing Group, we understand the importance of integrating sales and marketing. Within the group we have two brands, Air specialising in business development and inside sales alongside Roots to Market who specialise in Marketing and Demand Generation services.

If you’re looking for a fully integrated sales and marketing experience then get in touch, call: 0345 241 3038, or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk

 

How do you say hello?

Posted on by dukadmin

We communicate every day, through body language, what we wear and how we speak. By our very nature, humans are tribal, we make quick instinctive judgements as to whether a person is a friend or foe. In order to break down the barriers, you will at some point  need to say, “hello!”, but how you say hello says so much more about you and the relationship you have with an individual than you might think.

We do not even question our personal brand day to day, we are instinctive to our settings and to the person we are greeting – or so you would hope. So, if we are so instinctive to our settings when we are going about our lives, why is it so hard for business owners to work out how their businesses might say hello?

When you are trying to establish a tone of voice for a business, the simplest question to ask a client is, “How does your business say hello?”

You would be surprised at how often people struggle with the answer to this question. In business, you have to say hello time and time again, to both existing and new customers and it is important that you get it right. When someone comes across your brand for the first time, they will be looking for something tangible, they will ask “Is this the sort of business I want to do business with?” “Are they speaking my language?”

Consider for a moment that you are looking for an IT provider for your business. It is a service that a large proportion of businesses need, but not one that everyone understands – for lots of us they may as well be speaking Elvish. Whilst a provider may be full of professionals who know what they’re doing, they have to be able to translate the complicated world of IT in a relatable way which customers can grasp. It is important that they have a sense of personality whilst also maintaining our view of them as a professional, if, for example, they answered the phone with ‘Yo!’, how likely would we be to take them seriously?

Virgin is a brand which cleverly uses a friendly personality in their approach – they maintain their personality throughout their conversations with all customers, regardless of the product you are purchasing from them. They are fun, friendly and approachable – they appear to be your everyday friend! Lots of businesses may want to mimic this in their brand personability, after all, everyone wants to have friends, but you also need to be able to differentiate yourself and appeal to your target market by standing out from the crowd.

When working with your marketeer, consider who you want to appeal to and how do you speak to them in the most approachable way, what your competitors are doing and how you can do things differently and, simply, how do you want to come across? If you want to exhibit yourself as a fun, dynamic and exciting company, use more colloquial language. However, if you want to be viewed in more of a traditional light, maintain formal communications with your prospects.

So next time you are wondering how your business might come across, and how to appeal to your customers, start with the simple question, “How do we say hello?”

P.S. No geeks were harmed in the stereotypes within this article.

You’ve got a pipeline, but can you convert?

Posted on by Doug Roots

Managing your sales pipeline effectively is a sure-fire way to ensure success for your business, however according to Vantage Point whilst 72% of sales managers hold sales pipeline review meetings, 63% say that their companies do a bad job of managing their sales pipelines.

A strong sales pipeline won’t build itself overnight, but if well managed it will be worth your time and energy.

When developing your sales pipeline, it is essential that you have a definitive sales process. A few basic steps to follow when implementing a sales pipeline are:

  • Clearly outline the stages your sales process will follow
  • Define the number of leads that you require to reach your sales target, from that work out your average conversion rate which will then allow you to outline how many leads you need to generate to enter this process
  • Analyse what all of the converting leads have in common – how were they generated and converted which includes the activities of your marketing team, the actions your sales reps take and the feedback from your prospects.

Implisit analysed the sales pipelines of hundreds of companies and found that the average length from lead to close is 102 days – this is broken into the average time from lead to opportunity being 84 days and opportunity to close being 18 days. This will of course vary from business to business but demonstrates the need to continuously manage and feed your sales pipeline in order to make the most out of it.

So, who is managing your sales pipeline and how are you doing this?

This may be down to a dedicated Business Development Manager or it may be a whole sales team focused on selling, building relationships and developing pipelines. It’s a big task and needs experienced individuals to be carried out as successfully as possible.

We find that creating a multi-touchpoint experience for prospects improves pipeline management and ultimately conversion. Yes of course we are advocates of lead generation via telephone, but our expertise stretches across the whole sales cycle taking prospects on a journey. This incorporates touchpoints such as email, social media, lead generation, follow-up pipeline calls, and even inside sales closing calls.

Could your pipeline improve your sales? Let’s talk, call: 01392 796 702 or email: contact@roots2market.co.uk.

Are you listening?

Posted on by Doug Roots

In the world of business, we often watch the wild success of one company and the quick failure of many others.  At the heart of all business is the customer, whilst business is of course fuelled by money, money is easier to obtain if you simply take a minute to stop and listen to what the customer is saying. After all, people buy from people!

An essential strength of using telemarketing whether they are integrated within your in-house sales team or outsourced is the ability to talk directly to your target market and listen to their feedback. No one wants to receive cold calls, however if your brand is presented as open and receptive to feedback and objections, they are more likely to gain success. However, if you’re not open or willing to listen, then you may risk your business stagnating or failing.

In order to be successful, you need to make the customer feel as though your values and business goals are centered around their needs, as ultimately, they are the ones buying and using your product or service. You shouldn’t simply be thrusting a product or service at them and hoping for the best without taking their input on board.

Listening to customer feedback is especially vital for telephone-based sales professionals who are representing start-ups, businesses choosing to release a new product or service, and those marketing an existing product or service to a new audience. Asking customers, or potential customers, for their feedback is a key step in the process of reaching a sale, enabling you to assess your product/service, refine its offering and match to the customers’ requirements.

Their opinions provide insight to your customer and shapes the direction and message of your brand, ensuring that your business is aiming itself at the correct target audience. If the customers you’re interacting with are continuously providing negative feedback, something isn’t working! You may be missing your target’s needs, aiming the product or service at the wrong group of people, presenting the incorrect message or it may even be that your product or service simply isn’t desired in the market in comparison to competitors. By conducting market research through telemarketing and encouraging potential clients to help you explore the advantages and flaws of your product or service, you will gain vital insights and ideas. But more importantly, you will be able to tailor the product or service for the people who will actually be using it. In doing this, your business, and brand, becomes customer-centric.

Later down the line, listening to customer feedback helps you to measure customer satisfaction, which is obviously vital to keeping your business afloat. By continuously engaging with customers throughout the sales cycle, your sales team will create a sense of loyalty which will help the performance of your business as your customers will feel valued. If customers are actively telling you that they like your offering, share this and encourage others to buy into your brand and offering. But remember this channel of feedback is a two-way street, if they’re also suggesting changes or reporting issues, work to implement these changes and show that you are listening.

The more that you prove that you are open to customer feedback, be it negative or positive, the higher your levels of customer retention will be. Ultimately, a continuously unhappy and ignored customer will find a more suitable alternative to your business and leave. However, if you and your sales team continuously encourage your customers to voice their opinions and where possible adapt to these, you will better be able to measure the satisfaction of customers and keep them on board.

The easiest way to show that you are listening to your customer is to actively seek their point of view – conduct surveys, ask for testimonials, or react to feedback on social media. Social media is a gold mine for feedback, it is fair to say that almost all of your customers will interact with the internet in some way, shape or form, so use this to your benefit. Reply to their comments, negative or positive, engage in conversation with them, don’t simply use automated responses. If you don’t feel that you have the time to do this, then outsource this service, as it is vital that you engage with people on these platforms.

Simply put, if you and your sales team present your business as a customer centric company, the people buying into your product or service will be more connected to you as a brand and in turn this will boost your sales and your customer life-cycles.

So, are you listening?

Email nurturing and your sales campaign

Posted on by dukadmin

Marketing a product or service by email is nothing new, but in an ever-changing digital world, where target markets are becoming more discerning and wanting that personal touch, we think of email nurturing as a faithful old friend.

No one wants a spam email, or with the onset of GDPR, should be receiving one! We are constantly hit with impersonal advertising in our inboxes, so unless it seems that some time and effort has gone into providing us with the information we seek, we simply aren’t going to buy into it.  According to Experian, personalised emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates. Therefore, it is worth taking some time to think about what an individual may want to receive.

If you have identified a group of individuals or businesses with a legitimate interest in your product or service, running a personalised email campaign is the way to go. Thanks to many email packages now offering comprehensive reporting insights, a simple introduction to coding and segmentation, there is no excuse for not using personalisation. Such sites also allow you to send as many personalised emails as you like in one hit. 100s of tailored emails can be distributed in a matter of minutes, each addressed to a specific person/company, putting your product or service directly in front of decision makers in a format they like.

But you need to keep in mind that personalisation alone will not make your email campaign stand out – it is also important to get creative! We’ve created the email below to give you our favourite hints and tips for a basic, personalised, introduction email:

Once you have sent out your first email, it is key to then follow this up rather than just providing sporadic, one-off communication. A fantastic way to do this is with a nurture stream, this is a sequence of emails that send your recipients on a journey of your story and works especially well for those that express interest or for those that might consider your product or service at a later date.

A key addition to these emails are testimonials. Research has shown that 92% of customers read online reviews, with 88% of people trusting online recommendations as much as ones given in person. An impressive 72% of people claim that positive testimonials lead to them trusting a business.

We’ve created an example nurture email and featured the use of testimonial, have a look below:

If you are interested in using email marketing as a part of your campaign, but perhaps don’t have the resource or expertise in-house, get in touch with us and we will help you by creating a tailor made campaign for your business – give us a call on: 01392 796 702 or email: contact@roots2market.co.uk.

Setting business development goals will help you win clients and influence your team

Posted on by Doug Roots

We all know how important sales are, without sales your business won’t grow, and without growth, your business will collapse. Therefore, it is essential to account for sales and business development within your company.

Whether you’re managing your business development in-house or outsourcing to an agency, implementing a thought-out strategy will help to win you clients and give you the ability to positively influence the individuals within your company.

8 tips that will help you implement a successful business development strategy.

  1. Identify long-term goals:

82% of B2B decision-makers think sales reps are unprepared.

However, have you ever questioned why this might be?

Tips:

  • Establish what success looks like for your business
  • Ask why you’re deploying a business development strategy. Have you experienced a drop in inbound enquiries, are you lacking qualified leads or are you aiming to make enquires more consistent?
  • Set clear milestones and incentives to achieve the changes needed to reach success and give your team something to work towards
  1. Measure your current performance:

65% of CEOs rated “inclusive growth” as a top-three strategic concern.

Today, businesses are no longer assessed on traditional metrics, instead their relationships with workers and their impact on society is just as important as financial growth and this, in turn, heavily affects success.

Tips:

  • Combine revenue growth and profit-making with the need to respect and support the people which make up your environment
  • Invest in a performance management tool. The Performance Climate System for example, is a management tool which can extract information on the current productivity, climate and perception gap between your team and the leaders
  • Allow your leaders to implement the changes needed for a more positive environment, a boost in team engagement are highly linked to an increase in sales
  1. Establish what clients you’re looking to win:

42% of start-ups failed in 2017 because there wasn’t a market for their offering.

Not everyone wants to buy what you’re selling, which is why it’s so important that you identify the needs of your target market.

Tips:

  • Think quality over quantity
  • Create a client profile to give you a clear indication of who needs your product or service, understand their pain points and what long term goals you can help them to achieve

If you’re looking for ‘The Ultimate Guide To B2B Sales Prospecting’, Air’s Group Director, Richard Forrest has all the tips in this world-class book.

  1. Hunt down your next opportunity:

80% of buyers are those which you must go out and find and it may take an average of 8 cold call attempts to reach them.

Tips:

  • Pick up the phone and be persistent in your efforts to build rapport.
  • Focus on your prospects need and be prepared to objection handle. For 3 killer ways to handle objections, take a read of our blog here.
  • Don’t become a sales robot, your priority is client satisfaction, so don’t let the relationship go cold.

 

  1. Make sure your new opportunities qualify:

Business Development Executives make between 100 and 500 calls for every lead they qualify.

Setting qualifying criteria is a way of making sure your business is concentrating on leads that can really benefit you.

Tips:

  • Be clear on the decision makers you need to be talking to and what makes a good meeting
  • Analyse your prospects BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeframe)

Need more tips on the golden questions you should be asking to qualify leads? Read more here.

  1. Top ‘Sales Professionals’ don’t sell:

1 offline word of mouth impression drives sales 5x more than one paid impression, and as much as 100x more for higher-consideration categories.

Being a sales professional is not actually about selling, it’s about building relationships and solving problems.

Tips:

  • You must be out there, have a presence and be the expert. Offer guidance, regardless of whether it results in a sale or not. You can guarantee that the person you helped, with no immediate benefit to yourself, will come back or refer your next customer
  1. Use your marketing resources:

Only 54% of professionals across service industries said their marketing and business development activities were strongly aligned.

Lack of integration between the two can result in wasted efforts and lost opportunities.

Tips:

  • Partner with a marketing agency or department! Events, content and consistent company messages can really help nurture leads through your pipeline and close deals
  • Checkout our sister company, Roots to Market, who can offer a full-service approach to your marketing strategy or aid in bespoke projects such a nurture campaigns
  1. How do you know you’ve achieved success?

Business Development is a long-term investment.

Tips:

  • Remain realistic when visualising what your success looks like, how much you’re prepared to invest and how long success will take you
  • When you have reached your initial end goal, it’s time to start the process again, establish what success looks like now, set a more ambitions turnover, find new competitors, hunt for more rewarding opportunities and create new milestones in order to progress further up the ladder

Done well, Business Development has the potential to transform the dynamic of your business and get you working with more of the right clients. Whether in-house or outsourced, everyone who touches your Business Development Strategy needs to be fully engaged in your long-term ambitions and understand what needs to be achieved to get there.

Get in touch:

Need help with reaching your audience, increasing your client base and growing your business? Contact #TeamAir today on 03332 581394 or via contact@air-marketing.co.uk

How can hashtags help to boost business success?

Posted on by dukadmin

Hashtags are a familiar sight, with most of us now using social media daily. However, many businesses still aren’t utilising them to the best of their ability. Whilst they may seem like a fun way of sharing what you’re up to with friends and family, they are in fact powerful tools. Twitter states that tweets containing hashtags are twice as likely to be seen. Functioning much like keywords/phrases on websites or SERP’s they can gain traction for your company. Therefore, it is worthwhile aligning yourself to ones which will boost your business and help you to develop a recognisable brand.

With so many of us now using social media, there is a hashtag for everything, whether it is #NationalDoughnutDay or #Brexit – hashtags offer an opportunity for everyone to boost their business and start trending conversations around topics of interest. Even if you are time poor or lack the creativity to generate your own hashtags, you don’t have to worry. Today all social platforms make finding popular hashtags easy, as most offer a list of the days trending hashtags so that you can see which ones you can use to optimise your business’ presence.

So, even if you aren’t a doughnut company, your company could produce reactive marketing material around #NationalDoughnutDay. For example: You may buy your whole team doughnuts, why not take a photograph of yourselves enjoying them and post against #NationalDoughnutDay? In jumping on hashtags such as these, it also offers a sense of transparency to your business, showing humanity and your business personality. The wider you reach the more likely you will be seen by your target market.

Using hashtags makes your company relatable. However, it is important to make sure that your company is staying on brand allowing clients and prospects to create a solid concept of what your business offers and values.

If you are an energy company, for example, the hashtags you’re regularly using should help you to portray a message relevant to those that you want to reach. As a suggestion, in using the hashtag, #RenewableEnergy, you will be linked to like-minded businesses, leading authorities in your industry and potential clients, or simply people with an interest in the topic. As a note of caution, it is vital to not use hashtags that could be misconstrued, if you’re an energy company that doesn’t work with renewable energy steer clear. Hashtags that don’t align with your brand message will demonstrate lack of transparency causing your audience to retreat and ultimately damage your company image.

Hashtags are like the dividers in a filing cabinet, when you use a certain hashtag you are telling the social media platform what you’re posting and what category you’d like your post to sit. Hashtags are typically associated with Instagram and Twitter, but Facebook and LinkedIn are now trialling the use of hashtags. Why not jump on the #trend here too? Especially with LinkedIn, a platform developed for growing businesses, where content shows up in Google searches meaning that using hashtags can greatly benefit your business by putting it in front of a larger audience.

Ultimately it is up to you how and when you choose to utilise hashtags on your social media platforms. Whether it’s just to garner support from likeminded businesses, create your own unique brand hashtags, show your interest in current affairs or to start discussions within your industry – promoting yourself or your business as an authority figure within your subject, we encourage you to optimise this simple marketing tool which can make a big difference to expanding the conversations surrounding your business.

#Enjoy! #BusinesstoBusinessMarekting #hashtags

Is your sales strategy focused on your business or your customers?

Posted on by Doug Roots

The first rule of customer service is that the customer is always right. Right?

 

With this in mind, shouldn’t all good business strategies place the customer at the heart of the campaign? Whilst this may seem to be true, it appears companies can sometimes find themselves strategising solely on where the business can go, as opposed to what the business can also do for its customers.

 

In 2018, 90% of adults in the UK defined themselves as recent internet users, up from 89% in 2017 (Office of National Statistics). Due to the developments in digital media, a customer has everything at their fingertips to make a decision about you before they have even spoken to you, as this information can now be found on social media posts, peer reviews or elsewhere on the internet.  It seems that it is no longer always essential for customers to go through sales teams to make a decision on whether or not they want to invest in your product or service. It is therefore essential that when your sales team do engage with your pipeline, they are providing an outstanding experience which focuses on the customer, optimising sales and productivity.

 

Increasingly, marketers are implementing sales strategies which place their customers at the centre of their business plans, something which is highly recommended by Air. A study by Cap Gemini found that returning customers bring a 23% increase in profits and revenues. It also showed that returning customers spend an average 67% more than a new customer. For this reason, it is essential to create a strategy which better allows you to retain customers as well as encouraging new sales.

 

It is key to know as much as possible about the behaviours, needs and desires of your business’ customers. When marketers listen to this information they can complement your business strategy by creating customer-focused initiatives which will boost value and profits.

 

At Air we understand the importance of keeping clients happy and from our initial conversations with clients we get the ball rolling. Our first step, once they decide to go ahead and work with Air, is a strategy meeting which ensures their expert knowledge is kept at the forefront of their campaign; this meeting also enables us to present campaign concepts to reach the best solution for their objectives before we begin dialling. From the outset we want our clients to be happy, confident and informed on what we are doing for them. This level of clarity continues throughout the process, as shown by our client portal. Unique in the industry, the portal allows our clients to track their campaigns in live time providing them with the ability to watch the reactions their prospective customers are having to their products.

 

Transparency and engagement are essential concepts within our business strategy, as they allow us to maintain trusting relationships between ourselves and our clients. Cap Gemini found that disengaged customers cause a 13% fall in profits. At Air we foster engagement by encouraging our clients to use our office spaces as a base, or to pop in or call and chat with us as and when they feel the need to.

 

Our client-focused business strategy allows our business to function like a friendship, if we extend a level of familiarity to our clients they will reciprocate by continuing to work with us and in turn referring others to do so too. Receiving recommendations is a key part of our business strategy as future customers are more likely to trust a brand backed by an industry equal or someone they know.

 

We encourage our clients to leave us testimonials in order to reach out to their community. By allowing our current customers to have a voice and input to our brand it shows prospective clients that we value the opinion of those we work with and want to create strong relationships with them.

 

For us it isn’t all about the money, it is about the people. To find out more about how we engage with you, your business and your customers please contact us via phone: 0345 241 3038 or via email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk.