Blog Archives - Page 4 of 19

What’s Next For Tech?

Posted on 27 June 20223 June 2025 by Hannah Sanders

Value will continue to rise. Companies will churn. Merges and acquisitions will augment the market and people will be more important than ever before.

SaaS and tech funding gained momentum during the pandemic, with mega-deals recalibrating and redefining the value of tech industries forever. The pandemic takes credit as an accelerator but not the reason. Companies had digitisation and digital strategies in place but it was Covid (more specifically lockdowns) that made it impossible for a board to procrastinate any longer. In addition companies were suddenly exposed to, and forced to react to, a lack of utilisation of their suite of existing tech and software and ‘technical debt’ rocketed up the priority list straight into the top 5.

Disconnecting human interaction at work made digital adoption and tech hygiene a basic requirement. In the case of sales and martech, one of the only ways of proving individual and team effectiveness performance was by ensuring activities, interactions and meetings were logged, noted, actioned. Out of this sales enablement and RevOps has blown up. ‘Faster, higher, stronger, together’ isn’t just applicable as a motto for the Olympics and athletes.

So where’s it heading?

According to CB Insights Q1 2022 State of Fintech Report, there has been an 18% reduction in tech investment in Q1 this year, that will make for some interesting boardroom discussions. Competition for investors’ money will come with more scrutiny, more prudence. Less Dragons Den and more Goldman Sachs. Because of this companies will churn and mergers and acquisitions will be on the rise. The mega-mergers will make the headlines but the SMB and mid-market conglomeration will be prolific and shape the landscape just as much.

SaaS and tech investment drive returns and whilst the value bubble isn’t going to burst, the talent bubble might. Leaders and executives who can deliver at speed have never been more in demand – nor have they ever been more aware of their value. Forget brand equity, ARR or EBITDA, what’s your talent equity?

Exceptional people, who have the right attributes not just to perform and develop their function (e.g. sales, IT) but across other areas of the business are in scarce supply. The cross-pollination of ideas across business functions is the alchemy where the real magic happens. It’s hard, almost impossible, to create these conditions remotely which is why we saw Google earlier this year mandate employees to be back in office three days a week on average. How this plays out and how it defines and affects companies success is a subject for another day, another blog.

Neil Clarke

Commercial Director – Air Marketing

5 Tips to Generate High Quality B2B Leads Every Day

Posted on 16 June 20223 June 2025 by dukadmin

Discover how to generate high quality B2B leads with 5 effective strategies to help you keep your sales pipeline full of qualified prospects.

One of the top challenges businesses face is consistently generating high quality B2B leads that can then go on to be successfully converted into customers…

Whilst there are lots of lead generation tools and methods out there, naturally you’re only interested in the ones that provide qualified leads. In a classic tale of quality over quantity, there’s no use generating an extensive list of potential leads only to find very few of them are actually interested in seriously pursuing your products or services.

With this in mind, we’re sharing our 5 top tips for generating high quality B2B leads on a daily basis to help you keep your sales pipeline just as you like it – fully loaded with qualified prospects:

1. Install a Live Chat Function on Your Website

It seems as if almost every website these days has a live chat function, right? But for good reason, it’s so convenient for people who may not have time to browse your website or have a query they’d like answered as soon as possible.

It actively reduces your website’s bounce rate and delivers warm prospects straight into your inbox – from the moment they click on the chat they are ready to be nurtured by your sales team.

Implementing a live chat function from a technical point of view is easy with powerful CRMs such as HubSpot. Once your sales team are familiar with how it works, your potential customer is treated to a personalised experience where all their questions are answered, and their pain points addressed in an instant. If you don’t have live chat on your website already, we definitely recommend it!

2. Optimise Your Outbound Calling Strategy

A lot of B2B sales happen over the phone so taking advantage of every interaction with an optimised outbound calling strategy is a must. This strategy should include:

Clearly defined goals: what are your average handle times for calls and close rates? How can you improve them?
How will you qualify the lead with each interaction in order to move them down the sales funnel?
Follow-up processes – how will you increase your company’s connection to the contact after the call has finished? What channels will you be utilising to do this? Think emails, remarketing and more!

3. Social Selling

LinkedIn is the #1 platform for B2B lead generation and offers multiple touchpoints to connect with and nurture prospects. This is where social selling comes in – as you know LinkedIn is a platform full of professionals actively sharing updates about their jobs, wins and triumphs and crucially their pain points – so be one of them! But crucially also listen to what your prospects are saying in order to create meaningful content around their hopes and challenges that resonates with them.

Social selling is all about building credibility as a thought leader and offering the solutions your audience seeks without being overtly ‘salesy’ – i.e., no hard selling of your products or messaging people out of the blue with a sales pitch.

It’s actually shortened the sales cycle for a lot of companies but be aware that this is not a short-term win solution – it’s all about building authentic professional relationships with your target audience by interacting with their content and posting your own with which they can identify.

4. Aligning Your Sales and Marketing Teams

When sales and marketing exist in separate silos, it’s a recipe for chaos and means you’re far more unlikely to reach your overall business goals. Aligning the two teams from both a company culture and for every campaign will see both team’s performances soar. Some proven ways to align your sales and marketing teams include:

Clearly defining what a sales qualified lead is and what a marketing qualified lead is
Agree when marketing hands leads over to the sales team to avoid conflicts and confusion
Use lead scoring to qualify leads first and then prioritise the best ones second
Facilitate an open culture of collaboration, sharing ideas and feedback on campaigns. Encourage everyone to offer their views and listen to one another’s respective expertise.

5. Research Your Ideal Buyer’s Industry

When it comes to lead generation, time is money. You don’t have the time to waste nurturing companies that won’t engage with you. Whilst you have already undoubtedly looked into the company, having a wider view of what’s going on in their industry can make all the difference.

Sometimes warming a lead can be as simple as striking up a conversation about a piece of news relevant to their industry. It assures the prospect that you are tuned in to the needs of their industry, boosting your company’s profile in their eyes. You can then leverage this to explain why your business’ offering is relevant to them. The best salespeople subscribe to news or social alerts within their target market’s industries for this reason.

You could also get inside their professional world by browsing LinkedIn and Twitter accounts they follow, listening to a podcast targeted at them or even browsing videos on YouTube relevant to their sector.

Utilising all of these tips will see you generating high-quality B2B leads on a daily basis in no time but if you’re looking for a B2B Marketing partner to provide tailored lead generation solutions, then simply get in touch for an informal chat to discuss your business’ needs!

Quality or Quantity – Which Is More Important In SDR Activity?

Posted on 31 May 20223 June 2025 by Hannah Sanders

When you’re making sales, what’s better? One well-researched and thought-out sales call or twenty hastily made ones?

We’ll bet that you went for the well-researched sales call.

Many SDRs agree that quality counts when it comes to generating leads. However, there is a fine balancing act between the number of calls you make and how targeted they are.

Let’s look at whether quality or quantity counts the most when it comes to sales.

How sales has changed over the past twenty years

At the turn of the new century, outbound sales enquiries were a lot more straightforward.

Phone calls were the sales channel of choice for most SDRs, and while the internet was a thing, many people didn’t have email addresses.

Some salespeople even sent pitches by fax!

Fast forward to 2022, and there is a lot more noise in sales than ever before.

The average person gets between 120 and 130 emails a day, social media is used as a sales channel, and we’re bombarded with ads all day long.

This makes it a lot harder to stand out when it comes to generating leads.

What does this mean for SDRs? It means…

They have to pitch to as many people as they can in the hope that some will respond with interest
They have to choose the people most likely to respond and send them a relevant pitch

But is a) or b) the right approach?

Quality can help save time

For most businesses, it pays to have a qualitative approach toward leads.

After all, it’s easier to call ten people and set up two meetings than to call 100 people and set up twenty meetings. The conversion rate may be the same, but your SDRs have spent their time more wisely.

However…

Spending time on a pitch doesn’t always make it high-quality by default

A short while ago, our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards, received a personalised Spotify playlist from a salesperson, with individual song titles requesting a meeting.

The technique was impressive and certainly got our attention at Air Marketing HQ. However, the product being sold was just not relevant to our needs – so it was a no from us.

We estimated that it must have taken about 30 minutes to build the playlist – a lot of time when you’re trying to make sales.

16 individual playlists for prospective customers, and that’s the working day gone!

Many SDRs think that spending time on a pitch automatically means it will result in a quality lead, but this isn’t true.

Any prospecting you do needs to be:

Well-researched, ensuring that your prospect is a good fit for your product or service
Relevant to the needs of your prospect
Personalised towards your prospect. Over 70% of people now expect personalisation from businesses they work with

While the Spotify playlist was indeed personalised, it wasn’t something of interest to us.

Researching a prospective business doesn’t necessarily have to be time-consuming. Use the data you already have in your CRM system. Use social media to find the right person to talk to. Put criteria in place to quickly eliminate any unlikely buyers.

And most importantly… pick up the phone!

A phone call is more personal than an email or social media message, lets you steer the conversation and means you can move on quickly if you get a ‘no.’

Over half of senior-level buyers prefer to do business over the phone.

When quantity counts

As the old saying goes, ‘sales is a numbers game.’

While quality is important, there are circumstances when quantity can be the best approach.

If you’re selling a time-sensitive product or service or have a lot of competition, you may need to move quickly. In this situation, quantity is the right strategy.

Quantity can also help you move to a qualitative approach in the future. For example, let’s say you’ve recently launched a new business but aren’t 100% sure who your target audience is yet. You can use the data you’ve collected to see who is most likely to convert moving forward.

In conclusion: Quality or quantity – which is right for you?

There’s an assumption in sales that focusing on quality is a good approach and focusing on quantity is a bad approach.

However, this isn’t true. You can target lots of people and see success, as well as target a handful of people and get no leads at all.

If you opt to go for quantity, you need to make sure it’s the right approach for your needs.

If you decide to focus on quality, you need to make the research you do count.

Take the pressure out of generating leads with Air Marketing

If you’re struggling to get leads for your sales team, we can help.

Our skilled team of SDRs provide lead generation services and can fill your pipeline with warm opportunities that are ready to buy.

Contact our team today and see how we can save you time and resources.

Using Your Existing Data to Grow Sales

Posted on 16 March 20223 June 2025 by Hannah Sanders

When you’re in sales, it’s essential to work smarter, not harder.

Making changes to the channels you use and the audiences you reach out to can positively impact your team’s performance.

In fact, a data-driven approach to sales can make your business between 5% and 6% more profitable.

In last month’s article, we advised what stats you should measure to track your SDRs’ progress. This month, we will look at how you can use your data to improve the lead generation process and target the businesses most interested in your product or service.

The problem with ‘scattergun sales’

Many sales teams have a scattergun approach when it comes to outreach sales. This is when they reach out to as many prospective customers as possible, in the hope that some of them will want to know more.

The issue with this is that it’s hit and miss. While you’ll get some leads, it’s likely most intended prospects won’t be interested. This can not only lead to your sales department underperforming, but a loss of morale for your team.

A surprisingly large number of companies rely on scattergun sales to grow business. 71% of SMEs and 67% of large organisations admit to not having a systematic approach to engaging with prospective customers.

This means that by using your existing data to refine your sales processes, you can give yourself an advantage over your competitors.

Know your target audience

When you’re identifying who to sell your products or services to, it can be tempting to keep things as broad as possible to maximise reach. We’ve all been in meetings where the Managing Director wants to target everyone!

However, this approach hinders more than it helps. As the saying goes, ‘by appealing to everyone, you appeal to no one’.

By using your data to focus on the right target audience, your SDRs can prioritise the prospects that are more likely to buy.

Using data to boost your sales rates

The data you already have can inform your approach to sales and make your team more efficient.

One of the great things about working in sales is that everything is quantifiable, and this provides you with a wealth of data to take advantage of.

When it comes to improving your sales volume, look at the profiles of people and companies that have bought from you in the past:

What industry is the business in?
What products and services does the business sell?
What is the size of the business?
What is the turnover of the business?
What country is the business in?
What is the job title and seniority of the person who bought from you?
Which channels (for example, email, phone call, social media) did you use to make the sale?
What was the value of the sale?
How long was the sales cycle?

You should have most of this data already in your CRM system. If you need to fill in any gaps, LinkedIn is a useful source of information.

If your business is new or you don’t have the data to go off, then industry statistics can be a good starting point. However, as no two companies are alike, it’s best to use your own data for optimal results.

Take all your stats into consideration

When using this approach, it’s essential to use all the data at your disposal rather than focusing on one set of statistics.

Let’s say industry A has a 30% conversion rate while industry B has a 20% conversion rate. This information shows that industry A is more likely to yield results for your SDRs. However, what happens when you bring other data into the mix?

When you bring average sales cycle length into consideration, industry B has an average cycle of six months. However, industry A’s sales cycle is three years!

This means that the best approach is to go for industry B. Although the conversion rate is slightly lower, your team will reach more customers and make larger sales volumes.

Review and share the data for best results

As the team leader or manager, it’s your responsibility to review the data, interpret it and put a strategy into action.

Don’t forget to reassess your findings regularly. If your target audience changes, then you need to update your strategy to accommodate this.

As well as sharing information with your SDRs, share it with your marketing team too. According to LinkedIn, there is only a 23% overlap between the two department’s definition of a target audience. If your prospects aren’t ready to buy just yet, your marketing department can nurture them until they are.

Find out more about aligning your sales and marketing team.

In conclusion – use your past data to accelerate future sales

According to McKinsey, businesses that use analytics more effectively grow quicker than those that don’t.

By taking the time to review your data and using it to identify the prospects that are most likely to turn into leads, you’ll grow your return on investment.

If you’re still not convinced of the advantages data can bring, consider General Electric. In the 1990s, the company relied on a scattergun approach to make sales, wasting valuable sales rep time. During the 2000s, the business took a data-driven approach to sales, discovering that the top 30% of customers were three times more likely to buy.

The hard work paid off, with General Electric making an incredible $300 million in new business and boosting their conversion rate by 19% in the space of a year.

Set your business towards success with Air Marketing

Growing your sales can be challenging. At Air Marketing, we’re on a mission to ensure your businesses can promote its products and services to the right people.

We offer lead generation services, helping fill your pipeline and deliver warm opportunities to your sales team. Our SDRs can also reach out to prospective customers on your behalf, saving you time and letting you focus on growing your business.

Contact our team today and see how we can take the hard work out of selling for your business.

Getting Incentive Schemes Right For SDRs

Posted on 13 January 20223 June 2025 by Hannah Sanders

A solid incentive scheme can be a great way to encourage your team to hit those all-important targets when you work in outbound sales.

Make enough calls and bring in enough business, and you will receive a substantial reward for your efforts.

It sounds simple enough on paper, but the truth is that it can sometimes be hard to get an incentive scheme right.

Make it too hard to achieve target, and you run the risk of frustrating your team. Make it too easy, and you will lose a lot of that hard-earned turnover.

Even if you get your targets right, you need to think long and hard about the incentives you will offer.

We’ve put together this guide to help you work out an ideal incentive programme for your sales development representatives (SDRs) and what you can offer them by means of reward.

What targets and KPIs should I have in place?

Before we move into detail, we should explain the difference between targets and KPIs in relation to incentives. It’s easy to get them mixed up or use them interchangeably.

Targets are your outcomes, and KPIs (key performance indicators) are the activities that lead to an outcome being completed.

As an example, let’s take sales calls. In this case, the sales calls are the KPI, and the target is the number of sales calls you want your SDRs to achieve in a set time frame.

When you consider your targets, it’s essential to think about the following:

What will your KPIs be? This is dependent on your business model. Examples of KPIs you can use in sales include revenue, sales won and meetings booked
What will your target be? Your target needs to be attainable, but not so easy that everyone can hit it on the first phone call of the day. Make sure all your targets are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Timely
Will any other team members be involved in your SDRs hitting their target? For example, say your target is number of sales won, and your SDRs pass their opportunities through to another salesperson to close. Their commission is dependent on the success of other people. This will need to be factored into the final figures

What are SDRs really motivated by?

As we’ve touched on in earlier blogs, members of your sales team are motivated by different things. It can be easy to assume that everyone is motivated by money; after all, we all have bills to pay and mouths to feed. However, this is not necessarily the case.

Only 13% of people looking for a new job say it is because they want more money. This means there have to be other factors in play.

People in a sales environment can be motivated by:

Making a difference to the world
Career progression and development
Being recognised for the work they do
Freedom to spend time with friends and loved ones

Different motivations can lead to SDRs preferring various incentives for their work. For example, if someone is motivated by freedom, additional days off or shorter working hours can encourage them to hit their targets.

So, should I offer money as an incentive?

It honestly depends on your business and the staff that work for you. For some SDRs – cash is still king, and they will appreciate a financial bonus for their hard work.

However, this strategy doesn’t work for all staff and can be expensive to maintain in the long term.

In the 1990s, Hewlett Packard launched performance-related pay for staff. The issue was that the targets set were too low, meaning about 90% of staff were eligible for commission. When Hewlett Packard realised its mistake and upped the targets, employees threatened to quit as they thought they were entitled to the extra incentives by default.

One thing to consider if you are offering money-based commission is how much your SDRs will be able to earn and how it compares to their base pay.

High commission and low base may incentivise your team to sell hard, but may lead to frustrated staff and high turnover. Low commission and higher base may deter ambitious salespeople, but lead to happier SDRs and improved job security.

Great sales incentives that will really motivate your SDRs

What type of incentives can you offer your SDRs that will encourage them to pick up the phone and start calling?

Interestingly, 85% of people would opt for a non-cash incentive if it was something they really liked the look of.

Here are a few of our favourites for you to consider.

Workplace incentives

These types of incentives make the working day easier and more fun for your sales team. The advantage of workplace-based benefits is that they are low-cost, making them an excellent option for businesses with a small budget.

For example, you could offer longer lunch breaks, parking spaces nearer the office or extra holidays for those who hit their targets.

You could even let your SDRs take control of the office Spotify playlist as a fun reward!

Experienced-based incentives

Experiences and outings are great incentives for staff, as they are seen as high value and are something tangible for your sales team to try and achieve.

Experienced-based incentives can range from a pair of cinema tickets or a trip to a spa through to a VIP experience at a music concert or sporting event.

The great thing about experienced-based incentives is that you can extend them to the whole team too. Has the entire sales team hit its target for the quarter? Treat everyone to a works night out!

Plus, your SDRs may document their experience on social media and tag you in, leading to extra publicity for your business.

Courses and training incentives

Some of your sales team may be motivated by the promise of personal and professional development and becoming the best version of themselves they can be.

Offering advancement opportunities can be a smart choice if this is the case. Your SDRs gain new skills to help them in their career, and you get to take advantage of what they learn in the workplace. It’s a win-win situation!

You could pay for them to complete an online course, let them have one-on-one time with a professional coach or give them paid time off to attend an upcoming conference.

Physical incentives

One of the best ways to thank someone is with a thoughtful gift, and your sales team is no exception. Providing a tangible prize works well as you can customise it to the specific team member as well as your own budget.

Tech, food, drink and gift cards are all brilliant options. One idea we love is to have lots of prize envelopes on a board in the office. The SDR picks one at random and gets a nice surprise!

In conclusion – how will you manage your in-house incentive scheme?

According to the Incentive Research Foundation, a high-quality incentive programme can increase staff performance by 44%. That’s potentially a lot of new sales leads and opportunities for your business.

Done right, an incentive programme can drive your SDRs performance and lead to positive outcomes. The challenge is working out how to implement it correctly.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to incentive schemes. The one that is right for your business will depend on your industry, your size, the outcomes you want to achieve and most importantly, the motivations of your sales team.

Take the time to choose the perfect incentive scheme, and both you and your SDRs can reap the benefits.

If you’d like further tips on managing your SDRs, our content series will provide you with all the information you need.

Visit our knowledge hub for blogs, webinars, and podcasts to help you create a positive sales team culture that will drive results.

Covering All Bases: How Air Marketing’s Approach Solves The Know-Like-Trust-Buy Funnel

Posted on 8 December 20213 June 2025 by Hannah Sanders

The know-like-trust-buy funnel is a fairly common term in the world of sales and marketing—but what exactly is it? And why is it so important?

Essentially, the funnel details each vital stage that a potential consumer/business goes through before purchasing a product or service from your business. Within the concept are four fundamental touch points—each of which should be treated with equal and careful consideration to achieve the end goal of a successful customer journey and sale.

At the top of the funnel, we have ‘know’—the point at which a person discovers you, or your offering for the very first time. Whatever method this may be—social media, PPC, traditional advertising, etc—any experienced salesperson will vouch that these early impressions are critical in ultimately generating revenue further down the line.

The second stage is ‘like’. However you position yourself and whatever messaging you use needs to resonate with your target market, to the point they’re willing to delve further once their attention has been caught.

Next, we have ‘trust’. We live in an era where people have learned to be more and more sceptical about who and where they’re making a purchase from. This wariness has placed an even greater importance on the trust stage of the funnel, particularly for less established and emerging brands trying to break into a sector for the first time.

This is also the point where you really need to position yourself as an expert within your field. What can you provide this person with that gives you an edge over your competitors? If you don’t have that, or you aren’t clearly communicating it, odds are they’ll find someone who is.

Once you’ve ticked all of the above boxes, your customer should be ready to ‘buy’, or at least extremely close to it. We often see companies falling into the trap of thinking once a person reaches this stage, their business is secured—but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Despite all of the hard work that has gone in prior, it only takes a split-second for a person to be turned off by a bad sales experience, which is why it’s crucial to have an expert team on-hand to get things over the line at this final stage.

Streamlining the funnel with Air Marketing and Marketing Services

Naturally, making the funnel as smooth a journey as possible for the consumer is not only going to benefit in terms of this one sale, but a pleasant and memorable buying experience is exactly what is required to build a base of loyal, repeat customers in the long-term.

To successfully achieve this, both the marketing and sales elements of the experience need to work perfectly in tandem, complimenting each other throughout each stage and designed in a way that from that very first moment, the journey is pushing towards that last hurdle of a successful sale.

One of the most common problems we see with businesses is a struggle to combine both the marketing and sales elements of the funnel. They may be able to capture the person’s attention and their story is well-received, however, when it comes to trying to convert that interest into the all-important ‘buy’ stage, things begin to unravel.

Our Marketing services team, specialise in marketing with a sales attitude—producing high-impact lead-generation campaigns and creative marketing strategies, to seamlessly and successfully deliver this entire buying process to brands.

Outsourcing all elements of the consumer journey to one supplier doesn’t just save you time and resources in terms of communication and coordination between separate parties, it ensures each touchpoint is better aligned due to it all being built and handled by a single entity.

This massively reduces the chances of mistakes or drop-offs due to misunderstandings and incoherent messaging, and allows a strategy to be altered and optimised in a far more efficient manner than if you were having to arrange with two or three different contacts.

From a sales perspective, being able to share our input immediately in the initial stages provides a massive benefit, as it allows us to truly ensure that by the time the consumer/business reaches the final part of the funnel, they’re actually ready to buy as all messaging before has been tailored specifically towards this moment.

By operating this way, we are able to constantly knowledge share from both a sales and marketing perspective, while possessing the, often vital, ability to act with agility and deliver genuine ROI for our clients.

The results

A recent campaign with one of our clients who operate within the SaaS industry saw us take this two-pronged approach with Air and Air Marketing services.

The client, who helps UK businesses apply for Series A funding and prepare for periods of growth through an expertly-led training programme, found that while their offering was indeed incredibly strong, it was difficult to market and they weren’t getting the conversions they had hoped.

In our collaborative approach, our Marketing services team crafted a full marketing strategy that combined email marketing, social media marketing and user journey consultancy. As the prospective customers shared details of becoming marketing qualified leads (MQLs), all the vital information was fed back to the Air Marketing SDR team, who were then instantly able to pursue and convert the most qualified leads.

Over a three month period, this process meant we were able to deliver all the required benchmarks that allowed our client to run their next cohort. The campaign’s results included:

40% average email open rate
+14 marketing qualified leads
58,000 reach on Twitter
300% increase in website traffic from email
20% increase in direct website traffic
95% increase in website traffic from social
5% minutes on average spent watching video content on Twitter

Want to learn more about how we work as a full-stack marketing agency to optimise the customer journey? We’d love to chat. Give us a call on 0345 241 3038 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

The 5 key marketing metrics you should be measuring

Posted on 19 October 20213 June 2025 by dukadmin

Marketing isn’t all about writing snappy subject lines, designing eye-catching graphics and crafting compelling copy. Underlying the creative, you need to have solid foundations to measure its effectiveness.

There’s no point having a clever campaign that doesn’t deliver results. We focus our marketing efforts on demand generation. We apply a sales attitude to our marketing in order to generate results.

So for us, it’s imperative to gather and understand key data for our clients. Knowledge is power, and the right metrics can provide essential details to boost business and increase ROI. That data can arm us and our clients with powerful insights to inform business decisions.

We don’t use fluffy metrics. We won’t try to wow you with amazing charts that look good but are rather meaningless. We focus on information that is actionable. We realise how important it is to track and learn from the data that can enable your business to reach its goals.

The three key metrics that every business should focus on:

Leads
Opportunities
Conversions

Identifying the importance of these factors and how to generate them is fundamental for business success. But how?

Our 5 recommended key marketing metrics:

1. Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)

“A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a lead that the marketing team has deemed more likely to become a customer compared to others” according to HubSpot.

That qualified piece of data (the MQL) is really valuable to a business. The marketing team can determine how and where the person has engaged with the business’ content. Be it a particular webpage they’ve visited, email they’ve opened, social post they’ve shared, video they’ve watched, event they’ve attended or campaign they’ve clicked on.

The marketing team can work out which leads make the best quality prospects by interpreting their data. Say the business has specified that their ideal clients meet specific demographic criteria, or have particular problems or pain points to solve. Those factors can be identified by a lead’s interactions. That information is extremely valuable for sales teams to act upon and nurture.

2. Email marketing

Emails provide a great way to build relationships with customers and potential customers. Discovering how your customer has reacted to the email they’ve received is very telling. Did they open it, delete it, read it, click on a link within it or unsubscribe from the list? Delving deep into email analytics will help you to test and make calculated adjustments to engage your audience better.

3. Digital content

Publishing digital content is a two-way street. It’s not enough to just set it live. You need content that grabs people’s attention and prompts them to act. That action could be sharing your content to help others find it (yes please!), commenting on it, downloading it, watching it or reading it, for example.

Knowing what people have done with your content is incredibly useful. It can inform future content decisions and it can identify potential customers. It tells you the key areas in which to invest time and money for the best ROI.

4. Social interactions

As we mentioned earlier, we don’t do fluffy metrics. The number of likes and follows on your social channels are not the be all and end all. You want content that makes people stop scrolling when they see your post and engage with it.

A share from a follower is a form of endorsement. A comment means that your content motivated somebody to write something about it. Similarly, submitting a rating or review has taken up somebody’s time. That’s time that they’ve spent interacting with your brand. Knowing which social posts have garnered those reactions is powerful information.

5. Website analytics

Tracking website data with Google Analytics or other packages is imperative. We gain valuable insights from understanding who is visiting the site, where they’re coming from and what they’re looking at. For us, time spent on site is a key metric. If customers are spending time looking at a range of website content, we know that we’re providing relevant information that is valuable for the audience.

Bounce rates can highlight areas that need attention. If people are clicking away from a page without interacting with its content, changes need to be made.

The importance of measuring marketing ROI

Data takes the guesswork out of marketing. It shows you which aspects are delivering results. That information proves which areas of spend are providing good ROI.

Tracking and collating marketing metrics doesn’t have to be laborious. We’re a HubSpot Gold Partner, so we recommend using this powerful tool to monitor marketing metrics. There’s a variety of reports that can be set up easily to provide amazing insights. You can attribute leads, deals and revenue to social posts for example. You’ll get a clear view of all marketing activity in one place.

If you don’t use HubSpot, we advise tracking data in a spreadsheet, or using another great tool on the market. Monitor stats regularly to understand patterns of behaviour, set benchmarks and reflect on performance. That knowledge is extremely powerful for businesses and can make the difference between reaching your revenue goals or not

Want to know more about marketing metrics and setting-up performance tracking? We’re here to help. Call us today on 0345 241 3038.

The benefits of working with a HubSpot Solutions partner: getting the maximum value out of your HubSpot investment!

Posted on 24 September 20213 June 2025 by dukadmin

HubSpot is a powerful platform that delivers valuable results, but it takes expertise to get to grips with it – like anything complex and feature-rich. For organisations that want to explore their options before jumping in feet first, free HubSpot is a great way to kick things off and allows you to try out some of the platform’s features with no upfront cost. And maybe that’s more than you need right now, but if you want the full functionality and the full benefits HubSpot has to offer, you’ll need to invest in a paid subscription.

If you decide to go down the route of a paid subscription, there are many CRM options available: each with a different feature set, cost, and level of expertise required to implement them. HubSpot split this functionality into Marketing, Sales, Service, CMS and Operations.

For example, HubSpot’s Sales Hub is designed specifically for sales teams looking to drive more revenue from existing customers through lead nurturing campaigns that map out multiple stages of contact between buyer and seller. The Sales Activity Hub provides a centralised view of all sales activity across your team with detailed reports on opportunities and pipelines. The result is enhanced insight and a closer understanding of your customers.

So if I can buy directly from HubSpot, why would I work with a partner?

Money will buy all the functionality you need, but without the knowledge and experience to properly manage it, you won’t get the most out of your investment. Working with a HubSpot Solutions Partner is the best way to improve your marketing engagement and ultimately increase conversion rates. An experienced partner will create custom solutions that will help you get more leads, convert those leads into customers, and turn them into long-term clients.

All the support you need, from implementation and strategy to live campaigns

A HubSpot Solutions partner can offer you that additional level of expertise and assistance when implementing your marketing strategy. That means looking at all the teams that need access to HubSpot and rolling out onboarding and training that ensures everyone is engaged and understands the processes for getting the most out of it. They will have experience in the change management aspects of implementing a new system and can work with you however you want – whether that’s providing advice, strategic direction, or creating and delivering the strategy for you. That means you get professional assistance with content, strategy, and implementation, ensuring your team uses HubSpot successfully.

Save time and empower your sales and marketing teams!

Working directly with a HubSpot Solutions provider can also save valuable time for your in-house development teams to focus on what they do best, while bringing excitement back into work by being more creative about their approach to marketing campaigns. This is hugely empowering for teams and is the perfect starting point for marketing and sales alignment. Because HubSpot’s reports and analytics provide such a detailed and accurate picture of what works well (and what doesn’t), you can see where you need to optimise at any stage of the funnel.

Access a depth of experience and get up and running right away

A solution partner’s additional (reassuring benefit) is that they will typically have an existing customer base across multiple sectors and draw on their depth of experience in helping customers fast track getting started. Meaning you can get up and running efficiently without the need to build extensive knowledge from scratch.

In a recent episode of ON AIR: With Owen hosted by Air Marketing’s Founder & CEO, Owen Richards, we were are joined by Caleb Buscher – Senior Channel Account Manager (EMEA Region) at HubSpot, to discuss how to make the most out of HubSpot as a revenue growth business tool.

We explained how we’ve had first-hand experience of the difference HubSpot can make to a business: “We have had some truly inspiring conversations with clients who had zero experience of using a joined-up marketing automation CRM tool and now have a newfound love for HubSpot and what it can do for their business. Our work is about helping our customers energise the way they approach marketing, giving their business a single point of truth and empowering them to deliver better customer experiences that fuel loyalty and growth.”

Need some help getting started?

HubSpot is an incredibly powerful platform, but it’s not the only one out there. There are other great solutions available, and we’re happy to work with any of them and apply the same principles to deliver precisely what you need. If you want to discover how HubSpot could be a game-changer for your business, we’d be happy to guide you. Equally, if you’d like to talk about any aspect of your marketing strategy, get in touch today on 0345 241 3083.

Sales And Marketing Alignment: Working As Equals Drives Better Revenue Generation

Posted on 22 September 20213 June 2025 by Helen Young

A sales and marketing alignment strategy is more than just mandating two teams work together; it’s a finely-tuned mechanism that drives better sales for your company. To implement a successful alignment strategy, you need to change to tackle behavioural change, culture change and leverage technology and processes that drive mutual respect, understanding and genuine collaboration between sales and marketing professionals.

Louis Fernandes, VP of Sales at Uberall and SaaS marketing and sales thought leader, talks about the need to work in partnership: “In B2B sales organisations, behaviours need to change; it’s not about marketing serving sales or sales ruling the roost. Sales and marketing need the same drivers; that’s how you build an authentic environment for success where all functions work towards a common goal and deliver revenue generation. It’s that simple! It’s all about working in partnership, I’ve worked in both marketing and sales, and I’d strongly advocate for congruence of goals that we work towards together, where we’re measured in the same way. It has to be a meeting of equals. And profitability will certainly follow.”

If sales and marketing aren’t working together towards a common goal, it’s impossible to maximise your inbound and outbound strategies; and improve your overall understanding of your market and customers. The key to this process is sharing information and promoting transparent ways of working. For example, marketing and sales must understand where the budget goes and what that activity drives. Without this visibility, they’ll likely misinterpret their spending, leading to wasted money and effort and negative perceptions. The end game is teamwork and trust, investing time and resources in a focused and efficient way. Sales teams feel far more supported in their efforts, and marketers feel invested in sales follow-up processes and accountable for optimisation throughout the entire journey.

Creating an environment that integrates well:

Putting the right processes in place means that you can move quickly and efficiently as a team. Choosing the right tools and having an effective marketing and sales tech stack allows you to create an environment that permeates and integrates well, so everyone feels comfortable and supported.

Historically, marketers used their own methods of tracking conversions and determining profitability, while sales teams focused on relationships and closing. Sales teams could email contact lists and make recommendations to the marketing team based on sales success or where’d they achieved cut-through. And while this strategy was solid for quick results, it naturally excluded many profitable or high-converting prospects in the pipeline. It was harder to measure, and many implementations required high levels of collaboration and coordination between teams.

Businesses with a more holistic view of their marketplace are more likely to succeed. With the insights afforded by a high-performing CRM and tech stack, it’s far easier to shift focus to solving customers’ problems rather than trialing a range of products and services for traction and success. It’s for this reason Account-Based Marketing strategies see such a solid return on investment. It’s often the first concerted effort to align marketing with sales and pull together to achieve the same vision.

Our Marketing services team are demand generation specialists, and experts in optimising the sales-marketing relationship. HubSpot Gold Partners are hyper-focused on using the platform’s leading technology to deliver more for customers. Associate Director, Verity Studley-Wootton, said, “The most significant benefit of bringing marketing and sales touchpoints into one powerful system is the ability to create a single version of the truth in a business. By doing this, we uncover a far clearer picture of customer behaviours and the opportunity to understand better and ultimately successfully market to them and convert them into happy, loyal customers.”

Create a list of objectives that you can agree upon, and action them:

Having well-defined objectives is a prerequisite to successful alignment. However, it’s not enough to have goals in mind; you need a plan to deliver. Talk to your sales team to find out what questions they get asked by your customers. From there, you can analyse sales processes alongside campaign performance and integrate any improvements that would come quickly and easily to your sales team. Once you start a conversation with your ideal customers, you can build consistency and brand into the customer journey by empowering your sales team with the assets and content they need to convince prospects, solve their pain points and close deals. And this is where you can map what’s required, at what point, and assign ownership.

Implement a feedback loop for better alignment throughout your organisation:

The key to getting buy-in for your sales and marketing alignment strategy is to give your entire organisation visibility of the implementation process, so customer service, IT and operational units can mobilise to support.

Implement a feedback loop. Tell people in the business what you’re going to do, why it matters and share the results. This way, they’ll know what they can expect, and you’ll see if you need to make any changes. When you share why this is important and how it will make the entire business more profitable, perceptions change. When you share how it will improve your customer’s experience and drive growth, accessing the technical and administrative support, you need to improve processes around automation, customer service, and CRM suddenly becomes a much easier sell.

Evaluate the results, then adjust your strategy to respond to your customer:

Once you’ve put together a strategy, it can be easy to get complacent and assume that it’s working just because you see traffic and sales. However, it’s essential to ensure you’re still getting the results you want by regularly checking your analytics and sales numbers.

The absolute joy of alignment happens when you win! Marketing and sales teams can celebrate success together. Equally, when something falls flat, the learning opportunities are so much more valuable in a naturally joined-up environment, so you fail fast and, hopefully, rarely.

Air Marketing Group has been working hard since 2016 to address this need and help deliver results-driven marketing that better aligns with sales goals. With an increasing number of clients unsure of how to run aligned marketing campaigns and turning to us for expert advice, we saw an obvious gap in the market. Today, we rely on the combined expertise from both services withing the group to deliver the best possible results for clients.

If you’d like to talk more about driving better sales and marketing alignment in your business, we can help. Get in touch today.

Building Your Sales Tech Stack: How To Get The Right Balance

Posted on 16 August 20213 June 2025 by Helen Young

Sales Technology has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry in the past decade. With so many tools out there, it’s hard to work out the essentials from the nice-to-haves. The phrase ‘building your sales tech stack’ implies you should be using layer upon layer of technology to enable your sales processes. We can tell you right now; it’s utterly dependent on your goals and your setup. Even the most tech-savvy sales leaders find it impossible to stay at the leading edge of sales technology; it’s a vast marketplace, and the options can be overwhelming. Who has time to review and analyse thousands of tools?

In our view, sales technology is there to empower salespeople, enhance their skills and make their lives easier. If you can automate a sales process and reduce administrative burden, therefore freeing up time for the vital relationship building that’s key to successful prospecting, then go for it! If you’ve heard from your network that you must buy this new market insight tool, even if your gut feel is you have a pretty good handle on your market research already, it’ll be three months before anyone in your team has time to own it, trust your instincts and park it for the time being.

How do we make the most of the sales technology available? How does a business decide what they need to adopt and when? Here’s our steer on the options available.

Understanding the options

CRM: Your CRM is the foundation of your tech stack, whether you choose a market leader like Salesforce or MS Dynamics or something more bespoke and focused on your specific industry. It’s ideal if you use a platform that supports collaboration with third-party apps, so your technology works together and delivers better overall visibility. Even the smaller providers offer integration across apps, supporting a better sales ecosystem.

Ideal for: everyone!

Sales and marketing automation: With systems like Marketo and HubSpot, you can drive a more valuable inbound experience and target campaigns at the right audiences, nurturing customer and prospect relationships in the right way, maximising your interactions and ensuring a better experience for everyone who interacts with your brand.

Ideal for: businesses that need to optimise their inbound efforts and drive better customer experience.

Sales engagement platforms: Products like Outreach, SalesLoft and Mailshake fall under this umbrella. Their value lies in automating sales processes and consolidating conversation intelligence from your CRM and Marketing Automation systems – streamlining processes, bridging gaps and ultimately saving your salespeople time.

Mailshake and SalesLoft support time-saving integrated dialers. Outreach allows users to manage all prospecting activities from one interface. And VanillaSoft offers queue-based lead routing saving, so your salespeople call the warmest lead next.

Ideal for: businesses with multiple campaigns who want to boost collaboration, improve productivity and hit rate.

Communication tools: If your sales strategy is outbound calling, there are many tools to support your agents, save time and some platforms, like Dialpad, provide feedback and learning as they go. Tools such as Aircall automate post-call processes and build better insights for teams directly from your CRM – reducing time spent on admin.

Ideal for: teams that make a high volume of calls, need to improve conversion rates, improve contact rates or want real-time feedback to support training.

Email management and integration: Suppose your sales teams preferred method of contact is email. In that case, there are thousands of tools available, from those that deliver and integrate insights from your CRM to your sales teams’ inboxes to those that measure email success rates and response times and even those that import email addresses from LinkedIn activity (like Contactout and Lusha). The aim is to bring intelligence and measurement to the familiar workflow of email.

Ideal for: sales teams that rely on email for outreach and need to optimise email engagement and data accuracy.

Lead generation and prospecting: There is a new wave of tools that help you identify and reach your ideal buyers. Powered by AI and machine learning, platforms such as Cognism and Growbots promise to automate the tedious and time-consuming parts of prospecting, leaving your teams to focus on closing warm leads that are more likely to buy.

Ideal for: sales teams stretched thin between premium accounts, managing existing relationships and pipeline building activities.

Sales insight and market intelligence: In a competitive marketplace bombarding decision-makers with broad sales messages won’t achieve cut-through. These tools arm salespeople with actionable insights that support intelligent sales conversations and provide accurate prospect info for your sales teams. Some tools can prioritise prospects who are ready to buy; others like UpLead act like enriched, searchable databases.

Ideal for: organisations looking to break new markets or struggling to get traction in their target market.

Never underestimate the human element of sales

Relationship building and making genuine connections is the key to successful outbound sales. No technology can replace the skills and experience of a talented and resilient sales expert. Still, it can bring you closer to your customers and help create an authentic experience that supports the excellent service you already deliver at every point in the sales cycle. Your sales tech stack has to reflect that and add value to your current setup. You can buy a billion tools, but with no process development or proper integration, there’s a fair chance you’ll create more work and unwanted distractions for your team. Equally, without an overarching sales strategy or direction, the tools won’t be worth the investment. They’ll undoubtedly connect you to more prospects, but it’s up to you to nail the qualification criteria and create value from those new audiences.

Weighing up the cost

Consider a new sales hire’s salary costs and the additional cost when you load them with sales technology that runs into thousands a month. Are they delivering higher productivity in line with the extra costs? This is all down to personal experience; some sales leaders believe the investment is worthwhile, provided you train the new hires on the technology, and the profitability will come. Others think it’s an overcomplication, and you need to give salespeople greater autonomy in this area, letting them adopt the tools they prefer, such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

In conclusion, sales technology can be incredible and often well worth the investment, but they’re not a cure-all for sales challenges. Any new tools you adopt must become a seamless part of your workflow, save time or deliver inherent value for your team. Trust your instincts. You know if a tool is likely to be welcomed and deemed valuable based on your culture.

If you need advice navigating the sales technology landscape, we can help; get in touch today.