Blog Archives - Page 6 of 19

How outsourced sales can skyrocket the growth of your business

Posted on 2 March 20213 June 2025 by Tamara Rowley

High-growth businesses have a few key common denominators. They’re usually born out of a great idea their core team really believe in and rally behind. Their growth often outpaces their recruitment and resources, so every team member could find themselves playing outside their comfort zone in those whirlwind early months. The ultimate ambition is simply exponential growth; the sky is the limit. And speaking of limitations, there comes the point in every startup’s growth trajectory where the curve begins to level off. So, what do you when this happens?

It’s at this point that businesses start to look at their sales and marketing machine. What worked when they were starting out, won’t be the secret to levelling up. An ad hoc and reactive approach to building brand and acquiring new business isn’t a solid strategy for success. Most companies seeking to grow do accept this to be true. But what’s the value of an outsourced sales agency over building an in-house team? Why not bring in a Head of Sales and let them handle it? In our blog, Outsourced vs Hiring In-House – The Debate Continues, we take an in-depth look at both sides of the debate and the practical considerations that most businesses will face when making this decision.

In our experience, it comes down to this; your most valuable commodity is time. Time to focus on your business strategy; time to focus on your product roadmap and value propositions and time to focus on the future and your vision. The overarching benefit of outsourcing sales to an expert partner is what you gain back, along with the reassurance that your sales strategy and delivery is in experienced hands with a track record of delivering results.

We’ve looked at the common constraining factors that limit growth and how outsourced sales can help.

Limited in-house resource and skills

Sales are vital to every organisation’s future, but it also takes dedication, consistency and experience to see results. This is where an outsourced sales partner can help you step up your game overnight. Building an in-house sales function is fraught with challenges from developing your onboarding process to retaining your best talent. The time investment required to create and cultivate a high-performance sales culture is significant, and that’s alongside day-to-day management and process development. An outsourced sales partner has already built that high-performing sales professional function, with experts motivated and able to start delivering value to your business almost immediately.

No time to dedicate to new business

Building a pipeline is essential to future sales success, but it’s challenging to generate leads without dedicated sales resource. If your existing team focuses on high-value immediate opportunities, they may be overlooking valuable opportunities that are yet to buy and require nurturing through the sales funnel. And without any sales expertise, even those precious opportunities may be challenging to get over the line. An outsourced sales expert can help you design a strategy that takes in the complete sales cycle and aligns with your growth strategy, helping you build pipeline, capitalise on the low-hanging fruit and free up headspace to concentrate on the exceptional opportunities.

Limited brand recognition

Breaking into new markets and building awareness in your target audience can be challenging for new brands. An outsourced partner can help. They can work with you to develop messaging that will resonate with your audience. Their sales experts will be skilled in communicating the key aspects of a business’s service and benefits, building rapport with your desired key decision-makers and nurturing relationships from cold prospect to engaged customer. This consistent activity will help establish your brand.

Lack of market insight

Research and insight are invaluable to any new organisation, but it’s tough to justify a research budget if you’re at the investment stage. A sales campaign can be a valuable accelerator to gather live feedback from your target audience, especially if you’re a disruptor in the market. It allows you to get closer to your prospects’ challenges, enabling you to refine your offer to better suit their needs. An outsourced sales partner will give you access to call recordings and valuable data insights that will provide you with greater visibility of your market.

Why Air?

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

Could you benefit from using an experienced outsourced sales team? Whether you require a completely outsourced service or additional sales support for your existing team, get in touch, call 0345 241 3038 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk

Need vs Nurture: The Critical Role Demand Generation Has to Play

Posted on 26 February 20213 June 2025 by dukadmin

Need vs Nuture

Imagine a perfect sales cycle where you could design a sales strategy furnished with known entities and completely transparent customer behaviour patterns. For example, suppose every last one of your many loyal customers made a healthy, guaranteed minimum annual spend with you every March. In that case, you could happily run your business at a predictable profit as a result. You could readily update your audience with new product information, solidifying their trust and loyalty. But even in this seemingly blissful scenario, what happens when you want to scale your business? You’ve already tapped into your organic audience; how do you then grow beyond that loyal base? There will be people who need your product who are happily buying from a competitor. There will be others who might be the perfect client, they have a clear need for what you provide, but they are new to the market and need education and convincing on even investing in the first place.

So even in a comfortingly predictable scenario, there are limitations. The reality, of course, is starkly different but the point remains the same. Your future client base comprises prospects at various points in their journey with varying awareness levels of your products and services. Equally, your lead sources will vary from those who googled you with a specific need and proactively contacted you on your website, to others who you actively targeted as part of a campaign and followed up with a call or an email. You have no idea who will account for more of your revenue in three years.

A successful Demand Generation strategy encompasses the whole journey from serving those with a need for your services to closing customers who are convinced and ready to buy.

Prospects who find you:

Even people who actively seek out what you provide need to a clear rationale to buy from you. That means your content and digital strategy needs to deliver a premium user experience, engage and educate your audience and convince them to request more information. Even at this stage, if your audience doesn’t feel like you are invested in their challenges and can’t see any direct benefit from browsing your website, then you are likely missing out on conversions. 68% of B2B customers prefer to research independently online but 90% of those searching haven’t made their minds up about a brand before starting their search. This gives rise to a valuable opportunity, gather insights and serve the content your audience wants to see, show them why they should buy from you.

Prospects with a defined need for your services:

Perhaps they’re not ready to buy just yet and need to be nurtured. You need to earn trust and build confidence in your services and approach and vitally, stay in regular contact with valuable content. Marketing automation platforms like HubSpot are hugely beneficial in managing this process, giving you a clear view of your prospect database and the level of engagement within prospect accounts. Research shows that 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales and lack of proper lead nurturing techniques could be to blame.

Prospects who are happy with their current service with another provider:

Research shows that 35-50% of sales go to the provider that responds first, which is a compelling statistic for two reasons: firstly, it demonstrates just how responsive you need to be to win out over the competition. Secondly, it highlights that perhaps your competitor was merely responsive and you could offer a more personal service, far better product/service features or you’re culturally more aligned. There’s only one way to find out, actively target and nurture prospects consistently. If they’re happy with their current provision, respond with engaging and timely content that shows you understand their challenges and their industry. This way, when their contract is up for renewal, or you check-in with a call, they’ll have far greater brand recognition, which is the perfect platform for building rapport.

If you would like more insight and guidance on putting together a demand generation strategy that actively nurtures prospects through your funnel, get in touch today on 0345 241 3038.

Why outsourcing Sales and Marketing to a single provider makes perfect sense

Posted on 25 February 20213 June 2025 by Tamara Rowley

The argument for marketing and sales alignment has been well-documented in recent years. The growing popularity of account-based marketing and sales enablement is testament to a shift in perception across the industry. And there’s a wealth of research to back it up, in fact by aligning sales and marketing, your business could generate 208% more revenue and enjoy 36% higher customer retention and 38% higher sales win rates.

By working together and understanding each other’s roles, metrics and goals, marketing can attract and nurture better quality leads; glean insight from their sales colleagues and in turn, deliver better quality and targeted materials to help get deals over the line. Equally, sales can commit to following up marketing qualified leads and feeding back information of where that prospect may be in the sales cycle so they can target them with appropriate content. The result is a well-oiled machine that nurtures long-term relationships and results in higher conversions.

And while it seems like a no-brainer, in theory, organisations struggle to make it work for many reasons. In under-resourced teams, dedicating time to sales and marketing alignment feels like an arduous and time-consuming activity that will take time to mature and deliver results, so it continually gets de-prioritised in favour of the next big campaign. When you outsource to a single provider, you instantly access an experienced team dedicated to delivering against your marketing and sales goals and who are skilled at developing a delivery plan that meets your specific needs.

Other businesses don’t have a system supporting shared visibility of campaigns and customer journeys, making collaboration difficult and again, time-consuming. Sometimes it’s merely an imbalance in teams. There may be only one or two dedicated marketers in a sales first organisation. They might lack a content marketing specialism or require further training or experience to support sales confidently. An outsourced partner has already nailed this; they’ve already built a high-performing and aligned team and follow established processes, and have complete visibility of shared systems.

And then, of course, some organisations don’t have any sales and marketing resource at all. If they’ve already outsourced, joining the two functions means close-management of third parties and contractors, which comes with an administrative burden and challenges around contrasting systems and processes. By outsourcing to one expert partner, you can avoid the headaches of managing multiple suppliers. You can make your budgets work harder and have the benefit of working with a team where both sales and marketing are on the same page and know the full details of your campaign.

Supporting the entire journey, with complete visibility throughout

When you outsource sales and marketing to a single provider, you get a joined-up approach proven to succeed. Experienced marketers and campaign managers will use demand generation or account based marketing strategies to drive awareness in your desired markets, nurturing leads through a consistent campaign of engaging content across paid social, email marketing and relevant blog content. These leads will then be handled by expert sales representatives skilled in building rapport, communicating your brand and your offering professionally and reassuringly. The big difference is that all of this activity is overseen by marketing and sales experts who have deep expertise in delivering complex, multifaceted projects, sharing metrics, a CRM and everybody agrees on what constitutes a qualified lead.

How we make it work

Here at Air Marketing, we have the in-house skills, technology and processes to deliver value at every point in the customer journey. We’ve grown from a telemarketing agency into a comprehensive outsourced sales and marketing solution. We offer everything from demand generation and marketing support to complete end to end sales campaigns, SDR as a service and lead generation.

If you would like to know more about how we can deliver aligned sales and marketing initiatives for your business, get in touch: call 0345 241 3038 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

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

Posted on 25 January 20217 July 2023 by dukadmin

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

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

Free training and courses

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

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

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

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

The best of the rest

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

Easy listening – marketing podcasts that will inform and inspire

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

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

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

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

Resources and tools

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

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

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

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

10 Key Ways to Optimise your Outbound Sales Engine

Posted on 21 December 20203 June 2025 by Doug Roots

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

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

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

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

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

Many of our clients utilise our custom built CRM which has been specifically developed to optimise our outbound sales engine. We do also work within our clients CRMs when relevant, providing we can see that the platform will give clients a clear view of their data, their prospects and the entire journey throughout the life of a campaign.
Reporting – Do you have access to the reports and insights you need to optimise outbound sales? Reporting should give you as close to a real-time view of a campaign as possible. It should help you quickly pinpoint what’s working and what needs to change. If you’re not in a position to do that, how do you know if your campaign is going well? When using our bespoke CRM, we provide detailed reporting to our clients through our client portal so they can get a speedy pulse-check and a transparent view of progress. Our ongoing reporting uses those insights to adapt and evolve our approach to achieve success.
Call recordings – These provide a vital insight into how customer conversations are progressing, whether messaging is working or needs review. Do you have access to recordings? If you have, do you have the time to listen to them and do you know what to listen for? Listening back to calls is vital in any campaign, it helps you get a sense of a typical conversations, how prospects are engaging with your messaging and whether or not you need to change your script or approach. We have a thorough review and feedback process to ensure consistent improvement. You’ll never get a lead that the call hasn’t been listened to by one of our team first.
Call backs – Having an agreed process for how calls are handled and logged ensures that you are efficient with opportunities and your prospect is getting a smooth experience. You need complete visibility of the most recent point of contact to create a seamless journey to sale. It’s worth the time investment of mapping this process out thoroughly and sharing with your team. This comes back to your CRM, does this have the functionality to seamlessly manage this?
Data tells a story – We use it to find patterns that we can leverage for success, the best of time of day to call, the most successful approach to take with gatekeepers to reach the decision maker expediently plus many more trends can be found from the data. We work with our clients to build that picture and use it to best effect. Again, this is a worthy time investment that will really pay off in the long-term. Ideally, you will have an individual within your team who is able to analyse, process and make recommendations based on the data presented. We know that not every in-house team can have an individual focused on data but making it a priority for your campaign means somebody needs to understand and own this. We have a Data Analyst within our team who is solely focused on optimising client campaigns by utilising data.
Learning and Development – Continual training and support helps sales teams realise their potential and is proven to enhance performance. Do you have a training plan for your sales team? Do you have the tools or partners who will really add value to this training? Research shows that learning and development can really boost sales team performance, with sales training improving win-rate by 15.4%. This is a huge focus for our team, we invest in our sales teams, championing their professional development and supporting them to learn and grow and deliver stellar work across all client accounts.
QA (Quality Assurance) matters – A quality prospect experience, smooths the path to conversions. By optimising your QA processes you’re ensuring a better experience for every future prospect, protecting your brand and building insights to optimise future conversations and future campaigns. We work closely with clients to assure quality of all sales conversation and follow-up process. We ensure their brand is represented in line with their tone and values and their outbound campaigns actively build brand and reputation in new markets.
Scripts that help conversation flow – In our experience, scripts need to rigid enough to effectively communicate the brand and pitch but not so rigid that they stem the flow conversation. Try to be professional but conversational in tone, if you wouldn’t naturally talk a certain way, don’t put it in your script. Prospects are people and will respond far better to a thought-provoking and engaging chat than a list of quick-fire discovery questions. We create scripts for our clients that communicate their brand and service and build the relationships that lead to future opportunities.
Objection handling – How you handle objections is a valuable brand building activity. Doing it well takes training and experience. If you’ve never tackled it before, try to map out some common challenges and listen to calls to find specific ones; then work on your responses and agree your approach so everyone in your sales team is on the same page. For us, it’s woven into our FAQs and provides another opportunity to progress a conversation towards a sale.
Competitor analysis – We’re keen advocates of competitor analysis because by looking at what your competitors do well, helps you contextualize your own value proposition, strengths and weaknesses. When refining and honing your messages to the market, this information is absolute gold. Getting started doesn’t have to be onerous, take a couple of hours to start putting together your insights, even something high-level can prove a useful document, but make sure you use it to inform your campaign strategy. If you’re not sure where to take it next, we can help. We use our clients’ insights from competitor analysis to develop a strategy that accelerates their success and helps them differentiate themselves in a crowded market.

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

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

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

Posted on 17 December 20203 June 2025 by dukadmin

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

That’s great, but what is it?

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

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

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

Gives you more focus

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

A higher hit-rate

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

True collaboration between sales and marketing

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

Getting started with ABM

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

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

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

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

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

When ABM might not be right

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

You don’t have a clearly defined audience and cannot easily isolate high–value potential customers – without this knowledge, it’s difficult to get your ABM programme off the ground.
You don’t have the insight to map accounts and create tailored messaging – which is essential for ABM success.
Your sales are largely online rather than led by the sales team – so the sales enablement aspects of your campaign and tailored messaging wouldn’t add value.

Your deal sizes are smaller, and you’d rather sell volume – ABM works on the idea of going deep with select accounts, if your business model is lower transactional value, high volume sales, there are better ways to market your offer (we can help you with those methods too).

Using ABM to break into new markets

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

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

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

Our top tips for creating your 2021 SME business marketing plan

Posted on 24 November 20203 June 2025 by dukadmin

Create your 2021 SME business marketing plan

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

Looking ahead

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

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

1. Digital is the new normal, get your house in order

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

2. Develop a content strategy

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

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

3. Up your social game

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

4. Authentic and socially conscious

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

5. Boldly uncover new opportunities

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

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

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

Posted on 18 November 20205 April 2023 by Doug Roots

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

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

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

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

Define your market and nurture it

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

Invest in lead generation

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

Stop firefighting and trust a sales expert

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

The Covid-19 effect

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

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

The Power of Multichannel and How to Use it For Success

Posted on 18 November 20203 June 2025 by Doug Roots

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

Creating awareness and maximizing exposure

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

A blended and personalised approach

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

Why we’re different

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

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

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

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

Posted on 20 October 20203 June 2025 by Doug Roots

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

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

The benefits of outsourced sales for Start-ups

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

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

The benefits for established businesses

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

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

The Air approach

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

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

Category: Blog