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Category: Blog

The Power of Multichannel and How to Use it For Success

Posted on 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 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

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

Posted on by Doug Roots

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

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

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

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

Fast growth means high churn

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

Building a sales culture for success takes time

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

Air’s outsourced model

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

Scale your outreach

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

Build your pipeline

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

Convert prospects

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

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

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

Posted on by dukadmin

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

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

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

So, what does it mean? 

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

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

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

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

Do you have to use HubSpot to work with us? 

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

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

How to build rapport in a socially distanced world

Posted on by Doug Roots

Building rapport is essential to creating successful business relationships. It is a well-known belief that body language accounts for 55% of our communication effectiveness. Tonality accounts for 38% and our words just 7%. But in a world where it’s difficult to meet in person right now, how do you make sure you’re communicating as effectively as possible?

Post-Covid-19, people are seeking connection more than ever before; it’s time to capitalise using methods that will keep your prospects engaged and help you build that trust and affinity that leads to longstanding relationships.

Get your body language right: On a video call, presentation matters. Keep your attention on the call, make eye contact and demonstrate your interest in what they have to say through positive body language. Even if you’re on a voice call, endeavour to correct your posture and smile. It will have a positive effect on your communication style, your energy, your tone and even your vocabulary.

Say their name: When you use your prospect’s name regularly, you reassure them of your interest and hold their attention.

Mirroring to establish connection: If you mirror the way your prospect speaks, you will focus more attention on your words and sentiment rather than their surroundings. If they speak slowly, try to replicate it; if they speak quickly, try to keep up with their pace.

Tailor your approach: Try to identify how your prospect approaches business and tailor your own approach to suit. Some people tend to be conceptual and strategic and don’t like getting bogged down in detail. Conversely, detail-oriented people will be reassured by a detailed and analytical approach.

Matching communication style: Identify quickly if your prospect is a visual, auditory or kinesthetic communicator and match their style.  Listen for words like; see and look (visual), hear and listen (auditory), feel and sense (kinesthetic). Your prospect will feel better understood and a stronger connection if you mirror their words back to them using statements like: “let me show you”, “I hear what you’re saying” or “I sense there is an opportunity here”.

Active listening: Listen closely to what your prospect says and reaffirm their thoughts back to them, where you can to show that you’ve listened and are committed to finding the right solution for them.

Ask searching questions: These questions give your prospect the opportunity to talk about their pain points and give you far greater insight than limiting them to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response. It also fosters a much more organic conversation, and the more your prospect is involved in the conversation, the more engaged they’ll be.

Demonstrate your expertise: Establish who you are and shed light on the problems you solve for customers, staying focused on the end-user benefits. This is where you can compound your active listening skills by demonstrating how your service could make a difference to their business.

Show empathy: Use phrases like “I understand where you’re coming from”. Showing genuine empathy helps you to gain the prospect’s trust and leads them towards accepting that you really may be able to help.

Communicate the purpose of your call: Always communicate clearly and professionally, the desired outcome of your conversation. Your prospect will appreciate knowing the purpose of your call from the outset and they will see that you value their time. At Air, we’re experienced in building rapport and shaping the right sales approach for our customers. To hear more about how we can help you achieve your sales goals, get in touch today or call us on 0345 241 3038.

Five ways to make sure your sales approach stays ahead of the game

Posted on by Doug Roots

When it comes to successful selling, there are a few universal truths you can’t ignore. Sales success takes persistence and investment in building relationships. And rather more brutally, if you don’t make sales then your business will stagnate. We’re emerging from a period of uncertainty, which adds further pressure into the mix; it’s difficult to take a risk on a new approach when the past few months have been monopolized by more operational concerns.

Statistics show that buyer confidence has taken a hit but hasn’t completely evaporated. Your customers may be changing their behaviour and re-evaluating their spending in non-essential areas, but you can still make sales.

1.  Reconnect and listen to your customers

Authentic conversations are definitely the way forward in the current climate. A renewed appreciation for human connection means people welcome trust and transparency in their business exchanges. It’s essential for you to nurture your existing customer relationships, and stay close to your target market during this time. Buyer behaviour is rapidly changing due to the virtualisation of the sales process. How your brand performs can make or break your reputation.

Insight is power. If you can get a pulse check across your customer base, you can make sure that your offer reflects their changing needs, attitudes and behaviours. You can also find out if your service is where it needs to be and discover any improvements you need to make.

2.  Demonstrate your ability to solve customer pain points

Good salespeople will already be focused on demonstrating this value to customers but now it’s more vital than ever. When you’re talking to clients and prospects that are being forced to make hard decisions in their own business, they need a different approach one that’s sensitive to the current climate, yet pragmatic about their needs. You need to have conversations that are aligned to solving their problems. Ask yourself what your customers need most right now and what’s the best way to communicate that. If a specific element of your service is particularly valuable to them right now, be sure to lead with that message.

3. Don’t panic, just pivot

What do your customers need now? You have to think about how to remove risk for them in the short term and how to ensure loyalty and confidence in the long term. You also need to protect your internal sales people from burnout; they will be feeling the pressure of achieving targets in an uncertain time, coupled with the fatigue of homeworking. For example, outsourcing lead generation or elements of new business to an expert provider could be a valuable way to free up their time to focus on key, high revenue clients. The benefits of outsourcing range far beyond bridging short term gaps and needs, for more insight read our blog ‘Outsourced Sales vs Hiring In-House – The Debate Continues’.

4. Support buying decisions with relevant and valuable content

People will be spending more time reading online and researching products and services than previously. You can influence buyer decisions with well-thought-out product specs, webinars and engaging thought leadership articles. If you empower them with information about your products and how they specifically relate to solving their challenges, they will feel more supported in their buying decisions and you can tailor future campaigns to the content they find most engaging. For ideas on how to better reach your customers through targeted marketing content, check out this case study from Air’s sister company, Roots to Market. It’s also a great example of close collaboration between marketing and sales activity for enhanced success.

5. Stay focused and consistent

In our recent blog, ‘whatever you do, don’t stop selling’, we looked at why consistent activity is essential to sales success. Those businesses that have been quietly nurturing their customer base during a challenging time will be thankful they went the extra mile. This doesn’t mean hammering the phones in the hope of generating leads and filling your pipeline quickly but taking a considered approach to quality sales conversations.

It might seem counter-intuitive to invest budget in outsourcing elements of your sales strategy right now, but there’s a strong rationale for doing so – it allows you to be more flexible and scale your approach with ease without the headache of fluctuating headcount. You can access sales and lead generation expertise that will refresh your approach. Our focused and dedicated lead generation experts will have meaningful conversations on your behalf, aligned with your brand’s values.

At Air, we have demonstrable success in hitting the right note with customers across a range of industries, even in the midst of a global crisis. To hear more about how we can help you achieve your sales goals, get in touch today or call us on 0345 241 3038.

How to Build and Leverage Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

Posted on by dukadmin

We all know the phrase ‘first impressions count’. Thanks to social media, that first impression now happens before your first meeting with a client. Your social presence, specifically LinkedIn, is a fantastic opportunity for you to breathe life into your business, showing people the personality behind the brand.

Research shows a direct correlation between time spent on developing your personal brand and consumer trust. 82% of customers trust a company when their senior management members are active on social media (GoGulf, 2013). 89% of top performing sales people say social networking platforms, such as LinkedIn, are important in closing deals and are part of their sales strategy (SuperOffice, 2020). So this tells us the old adage still rings true – people buy from people and connections matter.

Check out the competition

This is an important litmus test. Before you can start developing your social strategy and content plans, it’s vital to research what your competitors are doing on LinkedIn and use it to your advantage. Look at their most successful posts. What types of content do the people in your desired market engage with? What are the key themes that people are discussing? Think about how you could create content that responds to the conversations you’re seeing in the comments, or start a conversation that matters to you.

Define your tone of voice

When everyone is talking, it’s hard to cut through the noise and make an impression. It’s not about being bold and extrovert. If that’s simply not you, it won’t ring true with your audience. Try to find your authentic voice, own your material and don’t be afraid to voice your opinions. Remember, you’re an expert in your business and there’s nobody who knows that story better than you. If you need help telling it, that’s OK. A trusted provider can help guide you on that and draw out the key elements your audience will find most engaging.

Getting started

A basic but important first step is to ensure your profile is up to date. As mentioned previously, first impressions count and if your profile doesn’t reflect your current role or campaigns you’re working on, it’s going to jar with your audience. Take control of this and let people know you’ve got it covered. Think of it as your own personal elevator pitch. Let people know that connecting with you will open the door to interesting content and opportunities.

Consistency matters

It’s easy to get caught up with posting furiously when you start out because enthusiasm is high, then letting it slide during more hectic times. Consistency is the key to success. An easy way to stay on track is to put together a content schedule. Planning ahead doesn’t mean a dearth of creativity – mix up scheduled content with more spontaneous posts that capitalise on topical industry news.

Content rules

Everyone talks about engaging content but think hard about what this means to you. Maybe you’re a natural storyteller who finds it easy to weave the fabric of daily business life into anecdotes and thoughts that spark ideas. Maybe you’re a direct person who sees something incredible and can’t help but hit share. Whatever your preferred methods, write content that’s enjoyable to read and include relevant hashtags for your industry and target audience. You can even see how many people are following that hashtag just by searching for it (no magic required!).

Get connected

LinkedIn is all about connections; even the biggest influencers send regular InMails and invest time and attention to growing their network through quality, shareable content. They do it because they know it’s the key to staying relevant and part of the conversation.

Join the industry groups that are relevant to your business. This is not only great for refining your content strategy; it provides valuable insight into your customers’ challenges. If you see a conversation where you can solve a customer problem or offer relevant advice or insight, don’t be afraid to join in. The same principle applies to companies in your target market; hit follow, pay attention and engage with their posts.

Connect to people you’ve met at events and webinars. You have a golden opportunity to check in and take that conversation forward. When you’re connecting to people within your industry and target audience – always use a personalised message. The personal touch will be appreciated and give you the opportunity to have a meaningful on-going conversation that could lead somewhere mutually beneficial.

Don’t forget to review the ‘people also viewed’ section. The great thing about LinkedIn is even with a free account you can build a solid base of qualified contacts, and a little desk research can help you build out a decision-maker map that could be extremely valuable for future campaigns.

Beyond the basics

If you have a company page, utilise the 100 credits available per month to invite your connections to follow the page. 1 invite = 1 credit. When the invitation is accepted, the credit is returned for you to use again, and you’ll receive 100 new credits on the 1st of each calendar month. Don’t let them go to waste as this is a quick and effective way to grow your audience.

If you have the means, it’s worth upgrading to a Premium account or Sales Navigator to take advantage of additional features such as CRM integrations and custom lists. Consider sending regular InMails to engage with your audience – it’s a valuable campaign tool you can easily align with any other regular digital communications and email marketing campaigns.

Invest the time and you will see the benefit

Schedule time in your day to work on your personal brand. If you don’t have the time and headspace to give it the attention it deserves, we can help.

Air Marketing help individuals and businesses unlock the power of a thriving personal brand. We build intelligent marketing capabilities using a mixture of proven marketing tactics to reach your target audience and produce marketing qualified leads for your sales team.

If you’d like to talk more about how we can drive tangible results from your social channels and personal branding strategy, get in touch today on 0345 241 3038.

Five reasons you should consider outsourcing sales and lead generation during uncertain times

Posted on by Doug Roots

If there’s one thing we’ve all become a lot more familiar with in 2020, it’s uncertainty. In unprecedented times, only the most creative, agile and willing to innovate will emerge thriving. When the world shifts on its axis you have to be open to change, embrace whatever your ‘new normal’ is shaping up to be and stay focused on your future goals.

Headspace to focus on core operations

Nobody can deny that operational challenges have been the show stealers in recent months; everybody has been rightly focused on ensuring their teams can access the resources they need to perform their day jobs and connect with their colleagues. Social distancing and homeschooling have had a massive impact on how and when people work. The upshot? A different way of working and a greater focus on making things work in the short-term. All of this is undeniably vital work but it does mean that sales and lead generation strategies will not be getting the time and attention required to ensure they’re successful. Outsourcing to a trusted expert, gives you the peace of mind that this is being taken care of while working life resumes to some sort of normality.

Greater flexibility on costs in unpredictable conditions

In what seems like constant change, it pays to be flexible. Maybe you had recently recruited a lead generation team who you planned to nurture and grow, and that’s now been understandably delayed. Maybe you’ve had to deliver serious cost savings to keep your head above water. Through outsourcing sales and lead generation you can scale up and down as you need to, pay for the days and services that are most vital to your strategy at that time. If that changes, you can work collaboratively with an expert to get the mix of services right for your current needs and budget.

Access to expertise

This neatly brings us on to one of the standout benefits of outsourcing: access to proven expertise. The burden of developing and retaining sales talent rests with your supplier, so even if you don’t have the means to invest, you can be sure they have and therefore achieve economies of scale. Experienced sales experts who are used to target driven, fast-paced environments will be able to deliver the quality leads you need to build a healthy pipeline and act as an extension of your in-house teams.

Dedicated resource focused on growing your brand and refining your audience

Refining your target market, finding the correct decision makers and generating high quality leads that convert to sales, require a consistent approach. To get the maximum value out of these activities, substantial time needs to be dedicated to getting them right. Even your top salespeople will struggle to balance converting what’s hot right now, with nurturing those slow burner leads that will pay dividends in the future. Engaging an expert to work with you, ensures this vital but time consuming work is removed from their desks, so they can better focus on converting the big deals that will deliver immediate cash flow.

Reduces risk in an already uncertain time

We touched on this a little earlier. Risk is a big deal for businesses at any time but in the current climate, reducing risk can feel seriously empowering. There’s not much we can control at the moment, so if you can look to someone with a proven track record in delivering successful sales and lead generation campaigns, you can be confident that your investment is protected. At Air Marketing we work with clients to create a tailored, blend of services that will deliver the best conversion rates in their desired market. If you’d like to hear more about how we can help your business grow or show you how we’ve helped businesses from all sectors achieve success. Get in touch today or call us on 0345 241 3038. Or hear more from our existing customers here.

Responding to market changes

Posted on by dukadmin

Let’s not dwell on the obvious that Covid-19 has been tough for almost every business, in every country across the globe. But instead of this being a blog to discuss the challenges this pandemic has presented, the need for businesses to ‘pivot’ or indeed the ‘recipe’ to solve the problems we have been facing – this blog is going to focus on the thing that we can do something about – the future. 

We don’t know what the state of the future looks like yet, but we know that collectively as businesses we must be responding to market changes, adapt and thrive to be successful. So, where do you start? 

Time to review 

Now is the time to review – look at what marketing activity and campaigns you have run previously. Take the time to really analyse the contributions they made to your business both from a brand, pipeline building and sales perspective. Use this review time to pick apart and really question what saw good return-on-investment (ROI), what learnings you can take and utilise in the future, and what you know you wouldn’t repeat. 

This is true of all functions within your business, not just marketing. Investing the time in reviewing now will help you scope out the ‘plan of attack’ when the markets begin to turn. 

Take this review and create a big picture 

One of the recommendations we share with clients when we are working on strategies is to look at the bigger picture and then break that down into sub-sections or projects which fit within departments. The big picture should be holistic and joined up, driving the business in the chosen direction. Each departments’ goals and directions should then feed off of this overall picture. 

For example – if your business is made up of direct customers and resellers, your overall big picture goal might be to move your business towards a model that sees 75% of your sales coming from resellers and 25% coming from direct customers. If your marketing team then went away and spent 60% of your marketing budget with a campaign focused purely on driving more direct customers into the business rather than resellers – it would be totally misaligned to the big picture direction of the business. 

Each key department needs to understand the big picture, be bought into the journey and have departmental goals that are aligned. 

Re-strategise 

Many businesses will have had a strategy they were working towards before Covid-19 struck. A small number of businesses may be able to continue working on this strategy if it is still correct to their business and they were not as affected by the pandemic. 

For everyone else, it’s time to re-strategise with your big picture in mind. 

For many businesses, the pandemic will have lost you customers who cancelled, paused or simply didn’t begin working with you at the time. For some businesses it will have lost you staff, and you are now facing running the business without certain skills or the same amount of resource available to satisfy your strategy. 

You need an up-to-date strategy that is going to work for your business of today, not your pre-Covid-19 business. Not only have you changed, but your market is likely to have changed also – buying confidence levels are unlikely to be where they were a few months ago, so how you engage with your market maybe different. Your conversations maybe different, your pipeline timings, content may need to change, and ultimately your sales process may actually be longer or shorter and you have to be prepared for that. 

A step ahead  

Being a step ahead, even if the prospect of the future is unsure is healthy for your business. Utilising the time to review, begin to re-strategise, take time to understand the current economy and start responding to market changes. 

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” – Charles Darwin 

If you’d like our help with marketing strategy, get in touch today or call us on 01392 796702 to find out how we can help your business. Our sister company Air Marketing has more advice on responding to market changes in their blog: Whatever you do, don’t stop selling.

What to do when the market begins to pick up again

Posted on by Doug Roots

In recent months the world has undergone a transformation. Most of us spent the first weeks of lockdown readjusting to new ways of working and living. Equally, most businesses spent those tentative early days of the pandemic finding their feet, testing systems and remote working arrangements. For many this time was hectic but in terms of normal business operations, decidedly unproductive.

It remains an uncertain time, and even the easing of lockdown rules represents a far cry from the normalcy we enjoyed only a few weeks ago. At some point we will be able to return to work, meet with our colleagues and clients again and return to a more familiar landscape. So, what happens then?

Lessons from lockdown

It’s fair to say that everybody’s perspective will have shifted after living through a global pandemic. We simply don’t know what the world will look like, but we know we’ll have to adapt. When everyone can be in the same room again, it’s important that everyone’s experiences are shared and the lessons learned shape the future of the business. This can be a real opportunity to do things differently and better and help rebuild your culture.

Keep the conversation going

People and culture are such an important part of any business and it’s imperative that leaders are honest and authentic in the way they communicate with their people. Especially when decisions are being made quickly and with less consultation. The current circumstances can negatively impact and dilute even the strongest cultures. People will feel disconnected and isolated and it’s everyone’s responsibility to mitigate this through keeping the conversation going, so after lockdown we can bring a sense of normality back.

This disconnection can extend to current clients. Make it a priority to pick up the phone to have a real conversation. It’s not business as usual at the moment but simply acknowledge that and check in to see how it’s all going – it helps maintain relationships and will be appreciated.

Take advantage of headspace

For those businesses that are experiencing a slowdown in sales, now is the time to take that valuable commodity so often in short supply… headspace. When you’re running at 100mph and are consumed with the fast-paced day-to-day, there are strategic projects that never get the attention they deserve. This is a chance for leaders to be creative and interrogate their processes, be honest about what works and what needs to change.

Work on your pipeline

Nobody knows how the coming weeks and months will unfold. When business is fully operational again and markets open, there is likely to be an element of desperation with everyone clamouring to make sales. Those who’ve strategically prospected and nurtured their contacts and worked on developing relationships will be best placed to sell. There’s lots of groundwork that can be done now, and it’s a truly valuable time investment for your business’ future.

Check out our video where Owen Richards, MD of Air Marketing, and Richard Forrest, MD of Forrest Marketing Group, discuss what businesses can do to prepare for when the market begins to pick up.

Air Marketing are the leading outsourced sales agency in the UK. We design and deliver sales services to deliver the best conversion rates for our clients. To hear more about how we can help your business grow, get in touch today or call us on 0345 241 3038.